Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s answers to media questions about remarks by Henry Kissinger and Senator Lindsey Graham

Question: What is your comment on remarks by former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who has expressed support for the White House’s Ukraine policy? He said that “the Ukraine war is won, in terms of precluding a Russian attack on allied nations in Europe.”

Maria Zakharova: Of course, Henry Kissinger, the patriarch of US diplomacy, who has, as a rule, professed a pragmatic and openly cynical version of “geopolitical realism,” is known for his unconventional assessments. Now that he is one hundred years old, he is true to himself and suggests ideas that clash with the agenda imposed by the globalist liberal clique that is currently the authoritative commander of the collective West.

In particular, Mr Kissinger was not afraid to state publicly that “…the offer to put Ukraine into NATO was a grave mistake and led to this war.” But now, the situation being what it is, he says that “Kiev should join NATO.” We must admit that on the main points he does not deviate from the general line of the current US administration with its imperative to inflict a “strategic defeat on Russia.” Moreover, like the entire US elite and their subservient experts he shares the illusion that victory is round the corner and a false conviction that Moscow will agree to a settlement based on the Western scenario which implies, according to the former Secretary of State, that Russia will be allowed to retain Sevastopol as a favour.

This looks like a case where the convinced “realist” negates the reality for the sole reason of not being able to allow it to exist. Speculations that the Russians were going to attack Eastern Europe, along with Sweden and Finland into the bargain, are ridiculous. In the meantime, it is the alliance of Russia and China, with the two great powers standing back to back against the United States, that sets the main trend in modern geopolitics.

Hence, by the way, is the Biden administration’s double containment policy with regard to Moscow and Beijing, a policy likely to put an end to America’s hegemony. From the perspective of the “Kissinger doctrine,” this is an absolute nightmare. But this is not the question they ask themselves. They proceed from the assumption that Russia is nearly done with and they can focus on China, a delusion dangerous for America but objectively beneficial for Russia. Victory will be ours.

Question: Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has again come up with an outrageously Russophobic comment. Revelations of this sort, monstrous in form and meaning, are becoming standard in America. We would like to hear your assessment.

Maria Zakharova: We know this character well. He is grotesque and dangerous at one and the same time. The Russian investigative authorities are focusing heavily on him, investigating his earlier appeals to put the President of Russia out of the way and shoot down Russian aircraft over the Black Sea.

Now the Senator went even further and had a go at the entire Russian nation. His pathetic attempts to exonerate himself by claiming that his remarks to the effect that “Russians are dying” and that the US military assistance to Ukraine was “the best money we’ve ever spent” were taken out of context and edited by his cronies in the Kiev regime do not change the core of the matter.

This is the quintessential Western approach to Russia, which “must be destroyed.” Hitler and his stooges thought this way, and now the neo-Nazis in Ukraine are following in their wake under the patronage of Washington, London and Brussels. We commented on Mr Graham’s remarks, noting in particular that a similar “investment” the United States and others made in the first half of the 20th century led to World War II and the Holocaust.

Senator Graham’ remarks are just a no-frills and utterly stark reproduction of what is on the mind of many politicians in the United States. We believe that issuing an arrest warrant for him and bringing him to account is a long overdue and deserved punishment.