Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday defended air strikes on energy facilities in Ukraine as they serve as a support base for Ukrainian forces and «nationalist battalions».
«These infrastructures support the combat capability of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and nationalist battalions,» Lavrov justified during a televised press conference in which he assured that these attacks actually seek to minimize the number of civilian casualties.
At the same time, Lavrov criticized «hysteria» and hypocrisy of Western governments and media, since such attacks on this type of facilities have been perpetrated by both NATO and the United States in previous conflicts.
«Compare the hysteria unleashed now in the Western media with what happened when the United States bombed Iraq,» Lavrov compared, citing as an example the NATO bombing of a Belgrade television center during the Balkan war.
«In the former Yugoslavia, NATO also bombed a Belgrade television center on the grounds that it served the enemy’s war propaganda,» the head of Russian diplomacy recalled.
When it is a little more than nine months since the beginning of the Russian invasion, the Kremlin forces have intensified in the last weeks their air attacks on such facilities and civil infrastructures, also in the main population centers.
These recent bombings have left millions of people without electricity and water supplies, at a time when the population is preparing for winter. As a result of these attacks, dozens of civilians have been killed.
