America has long complained of Nato partners shirking their end of the alliance’s defence burden, but the election of Mr Trump had ushered in a new “political reality”, the Pentagon chief told his Nato counterparts earlier this week.
Only five Nato members, including Britain and America, reach the target at present and some of Europe’s biggest economies spend only half that.
On Saturday, Mr Lavrov told US and European leaders gathered at the Munich Security Conference that Russia desired a "post-West world order."
He said Russia wants "pragmatic relations, mutual respect, understanding our special responsibility for global stability."
He added: "We have immense potential that has yet to be tapped into, and we're open for that in as much as the US is open for that as well."
Mr Lavrov said he hopes "responsible leaders" will choose to create a "just world order - if you want you can call it a post-West world order."
Meanwhile a senior Nato general said Russia was behind a false report of a rape by German soldiers in Lithuania that was intended to undermine support for Nato's new eastern force.
Meanwhile a senior Nato general said Russia was behind a false report of a rape by German soldiers in Lithuania that was intended to undermine support for Nato's new eastern force.
Gen Petr Pavel, who heads Nato's military committee, said a claim that German-speaking men raped a 15-year-old girl last week in a Lithuanian town close to a German army barracks "was not based on real events".
The 2016 US election and the early weeks of Donald Trump’s administration have been dominated by allegations Russia hacked political organisations to undermine American democracy.
US intelligence agencies have said they believe the Kremlin ordered a series of cyber attacks to target Hillary Clinton’s campaign and sway the vote in favour of Mr Trump.
At the same time its propaganda experts were alleged to have unleashed a barrage of disinformation and so-called fake news stories on social media.
John McCain, the senior Republican senator, said the result was an unprecedented “attack on our democracy."
Russia’s annexation of Crimea in early 2014 and its support for armed separatists in eastern Ukraine set a new benchmark for Moscow’s brazen aggression under Vladimir Putin.
After the overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, seemed to herald a move into the Western fold, Russia launched a sophisticated campaign of cyber attacks and propaganda, while at the same time funding local militia, and bolstering them with conventional forces in disguise.
Many military analysts believe this campaign of so-called hybrid warfare, which is designed to be murky and deniable enough to make it difficult for the West to respond, will set a template for any future Russian interference.
Three years on, Russia appears to have its goal: Ukraine is hobbled by an unresolved conflict in the east and unable to join Nato or the European Union.
The assassination of the former Russian spy, in London and under the noses of the British government, was an early indication that Moscow may have embarked on a new phase of aggression.
Alexander Litvinenko fled to the UK in 2000 and became an outspoken critic of Putin and Russia’s intelligence agencies.
In November 2006, Mr Litvinenko drank tea laced with polonium-210, a deadly radioactive element, at a café in West London during a meeting with Russian businessmen. He died of radiation poisoning days later.
The investigation that followed said there was a "strong probability" that the FSB, the successor spy agency to the Soviet KGB, directed the killing, which was “probably” approved by Vladimir Putin.
The Baltic nation of Estonia in 2007 provoked the anger of Russia when it decided to relocate a memorial commemorating Soviet soldiers killed in the war.
Soon after a public spat, the country was hit by three weeks of cyber attacks against critical parts of government, media and banking infrastructure.
Russia denied involvement in the highly sophisticated attack but Estonian and Nato officials are certain it originated there. The incident forced Nato to improve cyber security, and its cyber defence centre is now based in Tallinn.
Intelligence experts say it is notoriously hard to apportion blame for cyber attacks, but they are widely believed to be a central part of Russia’s doctrine of hybrid warfare.
In April 2015, the French television channel TV5Monde went off air after a cyber attack by a group calling itself the Cyber Caliphate. However a French investigation pointed the finger at the Kremlin.
Germany's domestic intelligence agency then accused Russia of being behind cyber attacks on German state computer systems and the German parliament in 2015.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017...assassinating/