Europeans “have no choice” but to help Kiev, Krisjanis Karins told Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus
The leaders of EU and NATO member states have no other choice than to pour more resources into Ukraine so it can continue to fight Russia, former Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins told pranksters Vovan and Lexus.
The official, who assumed the office of foreign minister after his premiership ended in September, claimed that senior Western officials were “very much of the same view and opinion” regarding Ukraine during the NATO summit in Lithuania in July. Everyone was determined to pay the cost of the conflict, he stated, speaking on a video call which was made public on Tuesday.
“It’s going to cost all of us money, because we are all helping Ukraine, and it means at the end of the day spending money to aid Ukraine,” he said.
“We are not happy about it but we see no choice,” Karins added.
The minister was the latest confirmed target of Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus, who posed as a senior African official. Similar videos featuring Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas were released in the past two weeks. The Latvian Foreign Ministry has confirmed that Karins had been pranked.
Karins urged his ‘African’ interlocutor not to trust Moscow, claiming that the Ukraine conflict is a “colonial war.” Latvia itself, he said, is a sort of ‘colony’ that liberated itself from Russian dominance, which gives it a perspective that former European colonial powers lack.
The foreign minister added: “maybe it is not the most clever thing” for ex-colonialists to speak on behalf of Europe, and that nations like his should be the messengers in some cases – presumably when dealing with African countries.
While the diplomat highlighted the supposed Russian threat, he appeared to undermine Kiev’s narrative that should Ukraine fall, Moscow would attack other nations in the West. NATO is vastly superior to Russia in terms of manpower and military capabilities, he stated, so a direct conflict would “only end badly for Russia.”
“There is no military threat,” he said. “The threat is economic: prices, energy, food etc.”
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Moscow considers the Ukraine conflict to be part of a US-led proxy war against Russia. Officials have cited NATO expansion in Europe at the expense of Russian national security as one of the key triggers of the hostilities.
In 2021, Moscow proposed cooling down the tensions by halting the military bloc’s growth on the continent, but NATO argued that every nation, including Ukraine, has the right to join the alliance.