We Will Not Start a War, I Promise You - Lavrov

The relations with the North Atlantic Alliance will deteriorate even further if Georgia joins it, stated Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in an interview published in the "Kommersant" newspaper.

“We will not start a war, I promise you that. But our relations with the North Atlantic Alliance and those countries that prioritize joining it will be seriously damaged,” he said. The minister also noted that these relations have room to worsen even more.

“There are many countries in NATO that do not fetishize it and develop normal friendly relations with Russia. But when NATO is consumed by an obsession with continuous expansion, we see a blatant intention to surround Russia with a hostile ring, we are declared an enemy within the alliance, and we see aspirations to complicate our country's development,” he added, as reported by Armenpress, referencing TASS.