Russia and US are allegedly on the brink of direct military conflict

The United States and Russia are very close to engaging in ‘direct military conflict,’ Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned in an interview published Friday in a Turkey daily, just days ahead of a US presidential race.

‘Under the current president ( Joe Biden ), who has taken the downward spiral of Russophobia in the US to its logical conclusion, our countries are on the brink of direct military conflict,’ he told the Hurriyet daily, without elaborating.

Asked about next week’s US presidential race pitting former Republican president Donald against Democratic nominee Kamala, Lavrov said the outcome would make little difference to Russia. ‘We have no preference. When the ex-president’s administration was in power, it adopted the highest number of anti-Russian sanctions compared to its predecessors,’ he said.

‘No matter who wins, we don’t think the United States’ anti-Russian bent can change.’ Although Donald has previously made clear his fondness for Russia’s Vladimir Putin , the two men are not close and have maintained a deliberately ambiguous relationship.

Last week, the Russian president said his relationship with Washington would depend on what attitude it adopts after the vote, as he welcomed Donald’s remarks as ‘sincere’ about wanting to end the Ukraine conflict.

In September, Microsoft claimed Russia operatives had ramped up their disinformation operations to malign the Kamala campaign through conspiracy-fueled videos, raising concerns over foreign influence operations targeting the vote.

Lavrov’s comments come just days after Putin staged a mock nuclear war, launching scores of missiles capable of unleashing a ‘massive’ strike in a stark warning to the West. The major new exercises spanned Russia, with Yars intercontinental ballistic missile launches from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the northwest to the Kura test range in Kamchatka in the far east.

Defence Minister Andrei Belousov warned the West that the exercise was to show how Russia could deliver ‘a massive nuclear strike by strategic offensive forces in response to a nuclear strike by the enemy’.

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