Russia is engaged a conflict against an entire “orchestra of terrorists” coordinated by the United States and NATO, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has said.
“NATO is harassing Russia, surrounding it with more weapons, more bases, and the United States is directing an orchestra of international terrorists,” Ortega said during a speech on Peace Day, a Nicaraguan national holiday, on Wednesday.
Ortega, who met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during the latter’s tour of Latin America, stressed that the crisis in Ukraine requires a peaceful solution which provides Russia with security guarantees. “We want peace just as Russia wants it, as the peoples of the world want it, as countries like Brazil, Mexico and President Xi Jinping of China have raised it,” he said.
“The Russian Federation is waging a battle for peace, not against the nation, but against the fascists, the Nazis who…carried out a coup in Ukraine…and began to make war on Russians, to persecute Russians born in those lands,” the Nicaraguan president said.
Ortega expressed concerns that the long-feared “Third World War” is already under way, and involves the United States and its European allies, who are “using Ukraine to try to find a way to make Russia disappear. The same thing happened during World War II when Hitler formed his party in Germany, and nobody criticized or condemned him. Rather, the great capitals of Europe and the United States supported him so that he would come to occupy the leadership of that country” to assist in the struggle against the Soviet Union. This only changed during the war, when the West recognized the true extent of the Nazi danger, Ortega said.
Today, Ortega noted, the nations of Europe are gradually coming to the realization that they no longer want to be the vassals of the American “gringos,” who have driven them into a “swamp.”
“The president of France already said that his country ‘cannot continue to be subjected to policies dictated by the United States and has to form its own policy, its own strength and not be an instrument’,” Ortega said.
The Nicaraguan president also emphasized that the EU’s extensive sanctions against Russia failed to stop the country’s economic development and trade.
“Speaking of cooperation between the Russian Federation and Nicaragua, there is clearly an attitude of solidarity of the Russian people with the peoples of the world; they gave their greatest demonstration of solidarity during World War II, where 20, 30, 40 million human beings were sacrificed for peace and to defeat Nazism,” Ortega said.
During his visit to Managua on Wednesday as part of his Latin American tour, Lavrov congratulated the people of Nicaragua on the occasion of Peace Day, recalling that it is “dedicated to the prevention of the state coup attempt. This attempted coup took place five years ago, it was actively supported from the outside, but the Nicaraguan people, led by Daniel Ortega, withstood the situation and restored stability in society. Those who tried to undermine this stability were defeated.”
“We see the West’s attempts...to impose its will on everyone in any part of the world, including in what is presently going on around Ukraine and with NATO’s role of ‘global security guarantor’, including in the Asia-Pacific region and other parts of the world. Together with Nicaragua and other friends, we will make an effort to counter that, to draw attention to the inadmissibility of such conduct in the world today,” Lavrov added.
Lavrov’s visit to Nicaragua follows last month’s trip to Moscow by Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Denis Moncada. Greeted by the Russian foreign minister, Moncada and his host discussed food security and energy infrastructure projects, the crisis in Ukraine and efforts to “strengthen relations between the two brother nations.”
The Ortega government’s efforts to shore up ties with Russia, China, Cuba and other non-US allies have made him a thorn in Washington’s side over the course of decades. In the 1980s, the CIA sponsored a brutal guerilla campaign against him, culminating in the defeat of his party, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), in 1990. Ortega returned to power in 2007, and again began seeking alternatives to US hegemony in Latin America. In 2018, Ortega’s opponents attempted a violent coup against his government, with investigations later revealing that the coup plot was backed by foreign interests including the Vatican and the United States via USAID.