The United States and Russia are “on the verge of a direct military conflict,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview published today in the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet.

“Under the current presidency, which has pushed the spiral of russophobia in the United States to the end, our countries are on the verge of a direct military conflict,” he said in response to a question about the US election.

“We have no preference. At the time, the Donald Trump administration had adopted the largest number of anti-Russian sanctions compared to his predecessors,” he added.

For the Russian foreign minister, “it doesn’t matter so much who wins the election, we don’t believe that the anti-Russian line of the United States can be changed.”

The Russian president has said his relationship with the United States will depend on its post-election stance.