Lavrov says West seeks to put pressure on every country he visits

24 January 2023

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that wherever he travels, the West seeks to make the host country behave in a way desired by the Americans.


"I'm not surprised that wherever I go, our Western colleagues try to issue some warnings and make the host to behave in a way that would be desirable to the Americans. We very much appreciate and respect the position of all our partners, who in such situations are guided not by the orders of the former colonial powers and those who want to dominate the world now, but by legitimate national interests. Many of them do not hesitate to talk about it openly," he said at a press conference following talks with his counterpart from Eswatini, Thuli Dladla.


"We cannot change our Western friends and make [them be] polite, behave democratically," Lavrov said.


According to the Russian foreign minister, the West is worried because the dominance it has enjoyed for the past five centuries is disappearing as a multipolar world is taking shape. Lavrov said centers such as "China, India, Turkey, Egypt, the African continent <...> Latin America" cannot be ignored and dictated how they should develop.


"We understand the painful feelings of the United States and Europe, because the structure of international relations is changing, becoming multipolar, polycentric," he added.

 

 

GSV "Russia - Islamic world"

Photo: Russian Foreign Ministry

Based on materials from TASS