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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov gave broadcaster Tucker Carlson the official Kremlin line that while the country doesn’t consider itself at war with the U.S., nevertheless it expects its warnings to be heeded.

The United States and Russia are in a “dangerous situation” and Moscow is willing to use “all means” to defend itself, but the two countries are not actually at war with each other, Putin’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said. Speaking to Tucker Carlson, his second interview with Russian leaders and amid his complaints he’s been blocked from a sit-down with the Ukrainian leadership to get their side of the story, Lavrov asserted warnings had been expressed to the West and would be again, but claimed Russia wished to avoid a nuclear confrontation.

While the statement that Russia does not consider itself at war with the United States is an essentially de-escalatory one and may be welcomed in Western capitals — Russia had earlier implied this might not be the case — nevertheless Lavrov also piled on the warnings.

While previous attempts to scare the United States and other nations out of providing deep strike missiles to Ukraine for use against the Russian interior clearly failed, there was another bid, and Lavrov said: “The message is that you, I mean the United States and the allies of the United States, who also provide these long-range weapons to the Kyiv regime – they must understand that we would be ready to use any means not to allow them to succeed in what they call a strategic defeat of Russia.”

“We will be ready to do anything to defend our legitimate interests”, he said.

The launch of an unarmed nuclear strike-type ballistic missile into the heart of Ukraine last month was a warning against the West trying to further oppose Russia, he said, and claimed further such warnings would follow if it was ignored.

Otherwise, much of what was said was — predictably — typical Kremlin lines, particularly on shrugging off responsibility for a conflict, insisting they launched the ‘special military operation’ to protect Russian speakers in Ukraine, not to start a war. Insisting Russia was not the aggressor and dovish on peace, Lavrov claimed: “we hate even to think about war with the United States, which will take nuclear character… To speak about limited exchange of nuclear strikes is an invitation to disaster, which we don’t want to have.”

Contradicting this position is the near-constant nuclear threats from Russia in recent years, particularly from former President Dmitry Medvedev, a close Putin ally who has taken on something of an attack dog role in Russian international affairs.

While not a low-profile figure in normal times, Lavrov has been hit international headlines more frequently this week as he undertook his first international trip to a Western country since the start of Russia’s 2022 re-invasion of Ukraine. The minister attended the OSCE conference in Malta where he blamed the West for escalating the Ukraine conflict as a distraction from President Joe Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal.

He told the Cold War-era counter-escalation and anti-proliferation forum that: “After the Afghan disgrace, there was a need for a new common enemy… he result is the reincarnation of the Cold War, but now with the far greater risk of its escalation into the hot phase.”