Lavrov blames the West for war in Ukraine and accuses it of Russophobia at UN General Assembly

euronews.com:

Russia repeated a series of grievances about Ukraine and the West in an attempt to tell the UN General Assembly meeting of leaders that Moscow had "no choice" but to take military action.

After days of denunciations of Russia at the prominent diplomatic gathering, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov sought to shift the focus to what he said was ever-increasing Russophobia in Europe and the West. 

"The official Russophobia in the West has reached an unprecedented grotesque scale. They are not shying away from declaring their intent to inflict military defeat upon our country but also to destroy and fracture Russia," Lavrov said.

His speech centred on a claim that the US and its allies — not Russia, as the West maintains — are aggressively undermining the international system that the UN represents.

Invoking history ranging from the US war in Iraq in the early 2000s to the 20th-century Cold War to a 19th-century US policy that essentially proclaimed American influence over the Western hemisphere, Lavrov portrayed the US as a bully that tries to give itself "the sacred right to act with impunity wherever and wherever they want" and can't accept a world where others also advance their national interests.

"The United States and allies want to stop the march of history," he maintained.

The US and Ukraine didn't retort at the assembly on Saturday but can still offer formal responses later in the meeting. 

Both countries' presidents have already given their own speeches describing Russia as a dangerous aggressor that must be stopped.

Lavrov, for his part, accused the West of aiming to "destroy and fracture Russia" in order to "remove from the global map a geopolitical entity that has become all too independent."

The Ukraine war has largely