MOSCOW (NBC News) -- Russia and Belarus are ready to act preemptively over increased military escalation from European countries over Ukraine, the head of Russia’s foreign spy service chief said Tuesday, according to state media.
“We feel and see that European countries, especially France, Great Britain and Germany, are increasing the level of escalation around the Ukrainian conflict. Therefore, we need to act preemptively. We are ready for this,” Sergei Naryshkin was quoted as saying by both the TASS and RIA news agencies.
In the event of an attack on Russia or Belarus, Russia would retaliate against NATO as a whole, but that Poland and the Baltic states would suffer first, he added.
Those countries should understand that “in the event of aggression” from NATO “damage will certainly be inflicted on the entire NATO bloc, but to a greater extent the first to suffer will be the bearers of such ideas in the political circles of Poland and the Baltic countries,” Naryshkin said.
His comments came hours after Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it “not easy” to agree with the U.S. on key parts of a possible peace deal with Ukraine. “We are well aware of what a mutually beneficial deal looks like, which we have never rejected, and what a deal looks like that could lead us into another trap,” he told Russia’s Kommersant newspaper.
His comments appeared to pour cold water on the optimism expressed by Steve Witkoff, the U.S. special envoy leading talks with the Kremlin, after he met with President Vladimir Putin in the Russian city of St. Petersburg on Friday to discuss a ceasefire in the war that entered its fourth year in February.
Speaking to Fox News on Sunday, Witkoff said a peace deal was “emerging” and that he thought “we might be on the verge of something that would be very, very important for the world at large.”
 President Donald Trump, meanwhile, said Monday that “millions” of people had died in the war in Ukraine which he blamed on his predecessor Joe Biden, as well as Ukraine’s President Vlodymyr Zelensky and Putin.