WATCH: Russian foreign minister cites nuclear capacity in UN speech to condemn West

Russia’s top diplomat warned on Saturday against “fighting for victory with a nuclear power” and gave a speech to the UN General Assembly in which he condemned the West’s machinations in Ukraine and elsewhere – including within the United Nations itself Russia sees as Western machinations.

Three days after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a change in his country’s nuclear doctrine, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the West of using Ukraine – which Russia invaded in February 2022 – as a tool to “strategically defeat” Moscow and ” Prepare Europe”. so that it also throws itself into this suicidal escapade.”

Watch Lavrov’s remarks in the player above.

“I will not talk here about the futility and danger of the very idea of ​​trying to fight for victory with a nuclear power, which is Russia,” he said.

The specter of nuclear threats and confrontation has hung over the war in Ukraine since its beginning. Shortly before the invasion, Putin reminded the world that his country was “one of the most powerful nuclear states” and shortly thereafter put his nuclear forces on high alert. His nuclear rhetoric has waxed and waned at various points since then.

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On Wednesday, Putin said Russia would consider an attack by a country backed by a nuclear power as a joint attack.

He did not say whether this would lead to a nuclear response, but stressed that Russia could use nuclear weapons in response to a conventional attack that posed a “critical threat to our sovereignty.”

The United States and the European Union described his comments as “irresponsible.”

The new stance was seen as a message to the United States and other Western countries as Ukraine seeks its green light to attack Russia with longer-range weapons. The Biden administration this week announced $2.7 billion in additional military aid to Ukraine, but it does not include the kind of long-range weapons that Zelensky is seeking, nor a green light for the use of such weapons in an attack deep inside Russia.

There was no immediate U.S. reaction to Lavrov’s address, where a young diplomat took notes as he spoke.

More than two and a half years after fighting began, Russia is making slow but sustained progress in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine has repeatedly attacked Russian territory with missiles and drones and embarrassed Moscow last month with a brazen troop incursion into a border region.

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky has pushed what he calls a peace formula to end the war. Provisions include expelling all Russian forces from Ukraine, ensuring accountability for war crimes, releasing prisoners of war and deportees, and more.

Lavrov dismissed Zelensky’s formula as a “doomed ultimatum.”

Meanwhile, Brazil and China have put forward a peace plan that calls for holding a peace conference with both Ukraine and Russia and does not envisage expanding the battlefield or otherwise escalating fighting. Chinese and Brazilian diplomats promoted the plan during the gathering, prompting a dozen other nations, mostly in Africa or Latin America, to join a group of “Friends for Peace” in Ukraine.

READ MORE: At the United Nations, China warns of an “expansion of the battlefield” in Russia’s war with Ukraine

Lavrov said at a news conference on Saturday that Russia was ready to provide help and advice to the group, adding: “It is important that their proposals are based on reality and not just come from some abstract conversations.”

He said resolving the conflict depends on addressing its “root causes” – which Moscow claims is the Kiev government’s repression of Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine and years of NATO expansion in Eastern Europe, which Russia sees as a threat to its security.