Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday slammed Western nations over the Ukraine war and told the United Nations that the United States and its allies were trying to “destroy” his country.

“Official Russophobia in the West is unprecedented. Now the scale is grotesque,” ??Lavrov said in a fiery speech to the UN General Assembly.

“They do not shy away from declaring intentions not only to inflict military defeat on our country, but also to destroy and divide Russia.”

After days of Western leaders denouncing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Lavrov used Russia’s role on the General Assembly podium to thwart Washington-led pressure on Moscow.

The United States, he said, was expanding the Monroe Doctrine – its 19th-century declaration of Latin America as its exclusive sphere of influence – and “tried to turn the whole world into its own backyard.”

“Washington declared itself victorious in the Cold War and almost made itself an envoy of God on earth with no obligations other than the sacred right to act with impunity wherever and whenever they please,” he said.

He also defended Friday’s referendums in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, describing them as people claiming land “where their ancestors have lived for hundreds of years.”

“The West is throwing a tantrum now” over the referendums, Lavrov said.

US President Joe Biden and other Western leaders have vowed never to accept the results of the “sham” referendums, seeing them as part of an effort to forcefully change borders.