Russia does not consider itself to be at war with NATO, but that NATO does, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with Al Arabiya TV on Friday.

“NATO and European Union leaders, many of them, in England, in the United States, Poland, France, Germany and of course European Union chief diplomat Josep Borrell, they bluntly, publicly and consistently say, ‘Putin must fail, Russia must be defeated.’ When you use this terminology, I believe you think that you are at war with the person who you want to be defeated,” he said.

Lavrov said the Russian operation was a “response to what NATO was doing in Ukraine to prepare this country for a very aggressive posture against the Russian Federation.”