The United States and Britain are at war with Russia. So said the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at a UN press conference on Saturday. ‘You can call this whatever you want,’ said Lavrov. ‘But they are directly at war with us. We call this a hybrid war but that doesn’t change the reality.’

Lavrov was answering the question: ‘At what point does this actually become a direct conflict with the United States, not simply a proxy conflict via Ukraine?’ Earlier that day it had been announced that President Biden had agreed to supply Ukraine with long-range army tactical missile systems (ATACMS), capable of hitting targets 190 miles away. Ukraine had been asking for ATACMS for months, with the US reluctant to supply them partially out of concerns over whether Russia would accuse Washington of escalating the conflict. Ukraine has reportedly pledged not to aim ATACMS at Russian territory.

Although the question to Lavrov only referred to the US, the Foreign Minister did not shy away from accusing other countries, and Britain in particular, of culpability. Stating that the West was ‘actively engaged in hostilities [with Russia] using the Ukrainians as fodder’, Lavrov singled out the US and Britain for ‘waging war’ through increasingly frequent deliveries of weapons to Ukraine, training soldiers in the UK and Europe and sending reconnaissance planes to help identify targets in Crimea. Asked by another journalist whether a new arms race and cold war was on the horizon, Lavrov refused to give a straight answer.

Tanks, jets, bombs: the question of supplying weapons to Ukraine has been one the US, Britain and Europe have been wrangling over from the very beginning of the war. The main concern throughout from Ukraine’s supporters has been to avoid triggering a Russian escalation in the war that would pull their own territories and populations into the conflict.

For some time, Putin and the Kremlin have sounded off about American influence and involvement and threatened further escalation in response to what they see as ‘provocations’, referencing a ‘hybrid war’ with the West for at least a year. Nevertheless, the UN is among the most public platforms where the Foreign Minister has made such remarks.

The first instinct of western leaders and commentators will be to refute Lavrov’s comments, dismiss them and profusely deny excessive western involvement in the conflict. Indeed, thus far, aside from periodically intensifying attacks on Ukraine, the Kremlin’s threats of retaliation have, on the whole, amounted to little that might be termed direct escalation. However, such comments from Lavrov and the rest of the Putin regime provide valuable insight into the Kremlin’s way of thinking, reliable or not. Britain and the US would be foolish to dismiss Lavrov’s comments completely out of hand.