Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov hit back at Nato General Secretary Mark Rutte’s claims that Chinese President Xi Jinping could ask Russia to attack Nato to clear a path for China’s occupation of Taiwan, or that Moscow plans to invade Estonia in the next 5-7 years.

He accused Western governments of deliberately scaremongering and constructing a narrative that portrays Russia as a global threat.

His comments come after an inflammatory Fox News interview given by Rutte, who went out of his way to mock Lavrov, saying he had "been in office since the birth of Jesus Christ and I have never taken him seriously. When you really talk about fake news, listen to Sergey [Lavrov].”

He went to claim Russia is preparing for a major military conflict with the West. He pointed out that Russia was currently producing more arms than the EU and Ukraine combined, but in a few years’ time, if Russia were to attack Europe, the Nato response would be “devastating.”

Speaking to Hungary’s Magyar Nemzet at the BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro on July 6 two days later, Lavrov rejected Rutte’s remarks and recent reports by Western intelligence services that allege that the Kremlin harbours plans to expand its military presence in Europe. The Bundeswehr released an intelligence report earlier this month saying that Russia could attack Nato in the next few years.

“We are aware of these allegations. Perhaps those spreading these claims know more about Russia’s supposed plans than we do ourselves,” Lavrov said. “At the very least, we have no information about any ‘plans to attack Europe’, let alone ‘occupy’ it.”

Lavrov claimed that the West’s depiction of Russia as a hostile power is a political strategy designed to deflect public attention from internal problems. And he has a point: as bne IntelliNews has reported, the EU is under enormous internal pressure and is in danger of falling apart. Hungary is currently blocking Ukraine’s accession to the EU and EU foreign policy chief and former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas has a Plan B that involves stripping Budapest of its European Parliament voting rights. This week Slovakia also blocked the passage of the eighteenth sanctions package on Russia, objecting to a plan to halt Russian gas supplies to Central Europe completely. Overall, Europe is putting in anaemic growth thanks to elevated energy prices, which remains at least twice what they were pre-war, and a sanctions boomerang effect that hurt the EU more than they do Russia.  

“Experts and observers who believe that European and North American ruling elites are actively manufacturing an image of Russia as the enemy to rally populations worn down by social and economic challenges are probably not that far from reality,” he said.

He added that “fabricated claims about so-called imperial ambitions allegedly harboured by the Russian leadership” dominate public discourse in Western media, suggesting that Russia is being “demonised through media manipulation”.

The foreign minister’s remarks follow a series of warnings from Nato officials and European intelligence agencies about Moscow’s potential military intentions. However, the Nato summit on June 26 in Washington failed to name Russia as an aggressor in the Ukraine war for the first time, downgrading it to a mere “threat”, and the Nato-Ukraine council meeting was cancelled. A mooted meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and US President Donald Trump was also cancelled. The entire summit was truncated and focused exclusively on Trump’s demand that other Nato members increase their defence spending to 5% of GDP, although Washington excluded itself from this requirement.

Lavrov played on these problems, arguing that the real threat to Europe stems from within. “What truly concerns us is that it is precisely the ‘united Europe’ that is fuelling Russophobia, reviving defence industries and calling for direct confrontation with Russia,” he said. “The EU has quickly turned from an integration alliance into a military-political bloc, effectively becoming an extension of Nato. This dangerous trajectory could lead to serious consequences for all Europeans,” Lavrov concluded.