Russia Says They're Not Planning To Attack Other Countries

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said Russia has no intention of attacking other countries after talks with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba reportedly made no progress on Thursday.

"We are not planning to attack other countries," Lavrov said during remarks delivered in Russian in Antalya, Turkey.

"We didn't attack Ukraine in the first place," the Russian foreign minister said. "We just explained a lot of times that the situation has come that there was a direct threat to the safety and security of the Russian Federation."

Lavrov's comments come as the Russian invasion of Ukraine has entered its second week amid fierce resistance from Ukrainian forces and harsh sanctions imposed on Russia by the U.S. and its allies.

The foreign minister said Russia had given "years" of warnings about what he described as a threat but "nobody listened to us." He also claimed that the Pentagon was operating "biological laboratories" in Ukraine.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki dismissed the idea that the U.S. had biological laboratories in Ukraine as "preposterous" in tweets on Wednesday.

"We took note of Russia's false claims about alleged U.S. biological weapons labs and chemical weapons development in Ukraine. We've also seen Chinese officials echo these conspiracy theories," Psaki said.

"This is preposterous," she said. "It's the kind of disinformation operation we've seen repeatedly from the Russians over the years in Ukraine and in other countries, which have been debunked, and an example of the types of false pretexts we have been warning the Russians would invent."

Lavrov's comments came after an apparent breakdown of talks between Russia and Ukraine in Turkey. Lavrov had been meeting with Ukraine's foreign minister but "no progress" was made on the issues of a 24-hour ceasefire or a humanitarian corridor for the city of Mariupol.

Kuleba told a press conference that Lavrov was "not in a position to commit" to a humanitarian corridor for Mariupol or to a temporary ceasefire but said he remained open to further talks.

"We also raised the issue of a ceasefire—24-hour ceasefire—to resolve the most pressing humanitarian issues," Kuleba said. "We did not make progress on this since it seems that there are other decision-makers for this matter in Russia."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly called for NATO to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine but the military alliance has refused because of concerns that taking that step would risk direct confrontation with Russian forces.

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Update 03/10/22 09.30 a.m. E.T.: This article was updated to include more information.