Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov referenced Napoleon, Hitler, Hollywood’s battle between “absolute evil and absolute good” and Ukraine’s “neo-Nazi” regime as he made his latest attempt to justify his country’s invasion.

Speaking during a virtual news conference in Moscow, Mr Lavrov insisted that Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine was an effort to “de-militarise and de-Nazify and to stop any more violence”.

More than 2,000 civilians are estimated to have so far died in a week of Russian military aggression against Ukraine.

But Mr Lavrov contended that the Russian army had a “very strict order to use weapons only against military infrastructure”.

And he defended Moscow’s launching of its war machine against its neighbour as a means of allowing Ukrainians “to make their own choices”.

Ukraine-Russia news live: Blasts light up sky in Kyiv as refugee count passes a million

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Lavrov compares US to ‘Napoleon and Hitler’

“Napoleon and Hitler, they had the objective to have the whole of Europe under their control,” the 71-year-old said, according to a translator, as he continued the Kremlin’s attacks on NATO.

“Now Americans have got Europe under their control. And we see the situation has really demonstrated what role the EU is playing in the context of the global situation.

“They are just fulfilling a role. So we see, like in Hollywood, there is absolute evil and absolute good and this is unfortunate.”

Mr Lavrov claimed “the hysteria” would end and “our partners will settle down, calm down after a while” as he predicted Russia would “sit down to negotiate”.

But he added this must be “only on one absolute condition that there has to be equal positions, equal parties negotiating”.

Nuclear war ‘not in the heads of Russians’

Russian President Vladimir Putin this week ordered his country’s nuclear deterrent forces to be put on high alert and has previously threatened the West with “consequences greater than any you have faced in history” if other nations intervened in Ukraine.

Mr Lavrov, however, suggested that nuclear war was “not in the heads of the Russians” and blamed fears of an escalated conflict on “statements of the Western politicians”.

He accused France’s foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian of “trying to be like a peacock” and claimed UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss had stated she was “prepared for the conflict between Russia and NATO”.

In response to a US journalist’s question, he added: “I’d like to point out the statements of your president, [Joe] Biden, when replying to a question whether there was an alternative to these sanctions from hell.

“He said the only alternative is World War Three. And everyone had the sense it can only be nuclear war.”

Mr Lavrov warned Western leaders that if they “begin a real war against us then they need to think carefully, the people who harbour those plans – and they do harbour those plans”.

Nazis ‘flourishing’ in Ukraine

The Russian foreign minister dismissed a characterisation of his own leader, Mr Putin, acting in isolation from other Russian politicians and Kremlin officials as “Western propaganda”.

He also repeated Moscow’s unsubstantiated but common reference to Ukraine being led by a “neo-Nazi regime”.

Mr Lavrov spoke just two days after a Russian missile attack hit a Holocaust memorial in Kyiv, which commemorates the site of one of the largest mass killings of Jews by the Nazis in the Second World War.

And, when challenged about Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy’s status as the first Jewish president of Ukraine, Mr Lavrov said: “It’s very difficult for me to explain how Zelenskyy can be chairman in a society where Nazis are flourishing.

“They are marching openly, they are marching with torches.”

The Russian foreign minister also described Ukrainian forces as “marauders” who “use civilians as human shields” and claimed “Nazi battalions” were among their number.

“Europe and the US are trying to close down any media from Russia who cover what is happening in Ukraine, how the special military operation is developing and how Ukrainian army – especially Nazi battalions – are behaving towards their civilians,” Mr Lavrov added.

“They are literally robbing civilians as they retreat in Donbas, for example.”

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Foreign minister challenged over schoolgirl’s death

Asked if he was preparing a defence for a potential war crimes trial over his and Mr Putin’s actions in Ukraine, Mr Lavrov – who has been personally targeted by Western sanctions – referred to the term “collateral damage” being “invented by our Western partners” in Iraq and Libya.

Challenged about having the blood of Polina on his hands – a Ukrainian schoolgirl of nine or ten said to have been shot as Russian forces opened fire on her family’s car – Mr Lavrov dismissed the line of questioning as “games” and “like a talk show”.

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