RUSSIAN Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov denounced the activities of Nato members in the western Pacific, specifically the alliance between Australia, Britain and the US, as Russia took over the chair of the United Nations security council on Monday.

Mr Lavrov said that the US was involved “in a desperate attempt to assert its dominance by punishing the disobedient. 

“The US has gone about destroying globalisation, which for years has been extolled as the supreme good of all mankind, serving the multilateral system of the world economy.” 

He said: “Washington and its allies have enforced its ‘rules’ whenever it needs to justify illegitimate steps against those who are aligning their policies with international law and refusing to follow the vested interests of the ‘golden billion’.” 

Mr Lavrov said that any countries dissenting from the outlook of the US are blacklisted according to the principle “he who is not with us is against us.”

Mr Lavrov asked: “What were the US and Nato doing in Yugoslavia? In Iraq? In Libya? Were there threats to their security, their culture, their religions, their languages? 

“What were the multilateral norms that guided them in their proclamations of the independence of Kosovo and the violation of the principles of the Organisation for Security & Co-operation in Europe in the destruction of the economically stable states of Iraq and Libya which collapsed as a result of their actions?

“These are places located thousands of miles from US shores.”

Mr Lavrov reminded the security council that after the end of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, the West “not only kept Nato but, despite its firm pledges to the contrary, pursued a brazen policy of bringing the neighbouring areas under control, including those that are and always have been of vital interest to Russia.”

UN secretary general Antonio Guterres warned that tensions between the major powers are at a “historic high” and so are the risks of conflict “through misadventure or miscalculation.”

US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield accused Russia of an “illegal, unprovoked and unnecessary” war in Ukraine, which “struck at the heart of the UN charter and all that we hold dear.”

China’s ambassador Zhang Jun told the council: “The world is standing at a historic crossroads now.

“Humanity is facing unprecedented global challenges. Acts of hegemony and bullying are causing colossal harm to the world. It has become all the more urgent and important to uphold the UN charter.”