British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is brazenly deceiving the public by accusing Moscow of trying to bring about nuclear escalation and weaponizing its energy resources to suffocate the West, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.
On Monday, Sunak warned Western nations at a meeting of the Policy Exchange think tank that, if Russia succeeds in Ukraine, they “might be next.” He further accused Moscow of “recklessness,” claiming that it “has taken us closer to a dangerous nuclear escalation than at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
The British prime minister also accused Moscow of cutting off gas supplies to the West. This move, he claimed, “had a devastating impact on people’s lives and threatened our energy security.” Sunak also claimed that countries like Russia were attempting to weaponize immigration to achieve their goals.
Zakharova fired back at these allegations, saying “Sunak’s lies are so desperate that one could even feel sorry for him.” She dismissed accusations of “nuclear escalation,” noting that it was Ukraine engaged in the shelling of Russia’s Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, the largest facility of its kind in Europe.
Referring to the energy crisis, the spokeswoman noted that “Russia did not stop gas supplies even for a second,” recalling that it was the US along with several other NATO countries that had banned Russian energy imports, and they have been pressuring the EU to do the same. The bloc, however, still imports Russian gas, although it is seeking to completely phase it out by 2027.
According to Zakharova, Sunak’s “main lie” was that Russia had stopped its energy deliveries. She said that, despite an explosion at the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in 2022, one of its conduits remains operational but has been closed by the West due to political pressure from Washington.
Prior to the Nord Stream sabotage, Zakharova said, the US had publicly threatened to destroy the pipeline, while the UN Security Council refused to support calls for an international investigation due to the stance of Western countries.
She also rejected accusations related to the immigration crisis, noting that it was the West that had orchestrated violent conflicts in Libya and the Middle East in recent years, triggering an exodus of refugees. The West, she said, was also directly responsible for the coup in Kiev that led to civil war and several waves of refugees from Ukraine.