Russia’s top diplomat said in an interview with Moscow State Institute of International Relations’ MGIMO Journal, that for at least the past 300 years Russia has been an inseparable part of European culture and politics.
“The periods of Russia’s most active participation in European affairs were marked by stability and peace on the continent,” Lavrov added.
He noted that only collective efforts can put up efficient counteraction to the challenges like terrorism, drug industry, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, illegal migration, climate change and many others. “To give up collaboration is not a good option for relations between Russia and the West — neither for ourselves nor for them.”
Russia has been ostracized by Western countries as a most active upholder of independent views, Lavrov said. “Over the past quarter of a century, we have been holding discussions with our North-Atlantic partners on how to build a strategic relationship and set up joint agencies tasked with facilitating this relationship,” Lavrov said. “We passed political declarations and called for forming a unified space in the world, for stability and security.”
“Still our Western partners were pressing forward with their own agenda, ignoring Russia’s interests in many ways, expanding NATO, and generally seeking to push the geopolitical territory under their control right up to Russia’s borders,” he said.
One may clearly get an impression that Russia got under a strike as a most active upholder of independent views in the modern world, as a force considering independent politics to be its natural right. “A line of this kind doesn’t match the claims for exceptionality made by whoever, no doubt,” Lavrov said.
“It’s equally clear, however, that there is no return to the previous model of actions towards Russia that was based on insincerity and filled with double standards,” he said. “It’s impossible to keep adjusting international law to someone’s petty one-sided plans and ruining the authority of the UN Security Council by unscrupulous interpretations of its resolutions.”
“Business should be conducted decently and with respect for international law, in the first place for the UN Charter with all of the norms and principles embedded in it,” Lavrov said.
Meanwhile the Speaker of the Russian State Duma Sergey Naryshkin declared at a meeting with Prime Minister of the Chinese State Council Li Keqiang that “Russia regards the developments in Hong Kong as China’s internal affair.”
Naryshkin said he did not agree with interference by any external forces.
Demonstrations involving thousands of students have been supported by Western interests. Hong Kong is a former British colony.
