EU has become aggressive and bellicose amid Ukraine war, says Russia's Lavrov

The EU has gone from being a "constructive financial platform" to turning into an "aggressive and bellicose" actor amid Russia's conflict in Ukraine.

That was the declare of Russia's international minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday. 

It got here earlier than the EU's international affairs chief, Josep Borrell, introduced the bloc was giving Ukraine one other €500 million to purchase heavy weapons to fend off Moscow's invasion.

"We are going to present a brand new tranche of 500 extra million to help the army of Ukraine," Borrell advised reporters forward of the G7 assembly in Weissenhaus, on Germany's Baltic Coastline.

The funds could be allotted for the acquisition of heavy weapons and take the EU's whole monetary help for Ukraine to €2 billion, he added.

Lavrov, talking earlier than Borrell's announcement, stated: "The EU has advanced from a constructive financial platform, because it was created, to an aggressive and belligerent participant which already shows its ambitions far past the European continent."

As such, Lavrov added that "Kyiv's want to develop into a member of the European Union is just not insignificant".

Extra broadly, he accused the Europeans of dashing "precisely on the trail that NATO has already traced, thus confirming the development in the direction of fusion with the north Atlantic alliance and can, in reality, function an appendage" to NATO.

Moscow considers NATO an existential risk and has partly justified its conflict in Ukraine by pointing to the alliance's growth eastwards.

On Thursday, Finland's leaders known as for the nation to affix NATO "immediately"; Sweden may do the identical within the coming days.

Russia can be stepping up its verbal assaults on the EU, which has imposed unprecedented sanctions on Moscow following the invasion on 24 February.