Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has accused European Union leaders of acting like “quack doctors” by offering unworkable solutions to the ongoing Ukraine conflict in an interview with Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB on Monday.

In the interview, Lavrov condemned Brussels for refusing to address underlying causes of the crisis and instead substituting meaningful analysis with superficial fixes. “Europe is like a failed doctor who struggles to diagnose his patients and opts for randomly prescribing pills or mixtures to ease the symptoms, if only for a brief moment,” he stated. “These European doctors have been unwilling to come up with a diagnosis.”

Lavrov identified NATO’s eastward expansion since the end of the Cold War and the 2014 armed coup in Kiev as key factors Russia claims triggered the conflict. He asserted that the coup empowered radical nationalist forces and led to discriminatory policies against ethnic Russians.

The Russian minister emphasized Moscow has warned Western governments about policy consequences since 2008, when NATO declared Ukraine would join its military alliance. Lavrov stated EU political elites’ current objective is “to bring together all European countries, pump Ukraine with money and weapons and give it a Nazi flag.” He added that this final step was unnecessary because “the regime that came to power through a state coup in 2014 grabbed the Nazi flag itself.”

Lavrov also raised concerns about rising revanchism and militarism within some EU member states, including Germany. He criticized Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s public statements as reflecting “contempt [and] arrogance,” going so far as to describe them as “an attitude of a person pretending to represent a superior race,” which he called a matter of serious concern for Russia.