Russia accuses US of giving Ukraine “old junk” weapons

While speaking at a United Nations Security Council meeting in New York City on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the United States of providing Ukraine with “old junk” weapons while building up its military complex.

In November, The Washington Post reported that of the $68 billion in military aid Congress approved for Ukraine, nearly 90 percent went back to the U.S. to build new weapons or replace ones sent to Ukraine from American stockpiles. The Post wrote that a Ukrainian official said “every single state in the U.S. contributes to this effort,” thus creating more American jobs.

The Russian state news agency Sputnik said Lavrov cited the 90 percent figure to the UN Security Council, but he also claimed without offering evidence that the U.S. is updating its weapons with assistance funds for Kyiv while its “old ancient junk is being used in Ukraine.”

The top Russian diplomat said the U.S. is treating the conflict in Ukraine “not as a war that has already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives…but as a profitable business project.”

Newsweek reached out to the U.S. Department of Defense and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs via email on Monday night for comment.

Lavrov also said the war that Russian President Vladimir Putin launched in February 2022 was “not against Ukraine or the Ukrainian people.” Instead, he claimed Russia was “forced to launch a military operation against the criminal regime [of Kyiv], which had crossed the line as it had a sense of impunity and was unwilling…to give up the war against its own citizens in the south and southeast of Ukraine and the policy of total discrimination against Russian-speaking Ukrainians, who are still the majority in that country.”

The Russian official further claimed that the West was in control of Kyiv’s government and “have been quietly arming Ukraine and preparing it for war against Russia” for years.

Elsewhere in his speech to the UN Security Council, Lavrov slammed Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s proposed “peace formula,” which would, among other things, restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity (including Crimea) and create a special tribunal to prosecute Russia’s war crimes.

“All these formulas are a road to nowhere,” Lavrov said. “The sooner Washington, London, Paris and Brussels realize this, the better it will be for both Ukraine and the West, to whom the ‘crusade’ against Russia has already created obvious, reputational and existential risks. I advise you to listen to this carefully while there is still time.”