A Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman said Friday Western sanctions against the country’s president and top diplomat over its invasion of Ukraine showed Western “impotency” and warned relations were nearing a “point of no return.”
In a bristling speech on Russian television, foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the decision by the United States and European nations to slap sanctions on President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were “a demonstration of the complete impotency of the foreign policy” of the West.
She also warned that Russia’s relations with the West were nearing a dangerous point.
“It wasn’t our choice. We wanted dialogue, but the Anglo-Saxons closed those options one by one and we began acting differently,” Zakharova said on a television show on Russia’s Channel One shortly before midnight.
“It’s not because of threats, but the thing is that we have reached the line after which the point of no return begins,” Zakharova said.
Ukrainian forces were mounting a fierce resistance to invading Russian troops on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital on the second day of the Kremlin’s large-scale invasion of its neighbour, which has seen dozens killed and several hundred wounded.
