The West seeks to punish us for an independent foreign policy, the US and a number of EU capitals have redoubled their efforts to contain Russia's development, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told in an interview with the Croatian newspaper Večernji list.
"Unfortunately, we have to admit that recently, Washington and a number of EU capitals have redoubled their efforts to contain Russia's development; they are trying to punish us for an independent foreign policy, for consistently upholding our national interests. We cannot count on a mutually respectful consideration of the emerging problems, because the West has made it a rule to talk with Russia based on the presumption of its guilt," the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
According to him, the Western states "to justify their actions, the introduction of ever new anti-Russia sanctions, they throw in various accusations and insinuations". "Everything traditionally remains at the level of insinuations in a highly probable format; claims are made on the basis of fabricated accusations and contrary to elementary logic," the minister explained. He added that Russia's proposals to set up a professional dialogue on any concerns remain without any reaction.
As an example, Lavrov mentioned the "arrogant refusal to respond to numerous requests from our Prosecutor General's Office on the so-called Navalny case, a direct violation of Germany's obligations under the 1959 European Convention on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters". "Instead of respecting this international legal document, representatives of Germany and France initiated another batch of illegitimate EU sanctions against Russian citizens. All this deplorably and clearly illustrates the inability of the European Union to adequately assess what is happening in the world, and its tendency to put itself beyond the law," he said.
At the same time, the head of the diplomatic mission emphasized that Moscow does not intend to tolerate rudeness of the West in its address and will not leave anti-Russian attacks unanswered. "We never avoid responding proportionately to the anti-Russia attacks by our Western colleagues who seem to have forgotten what diplomacy is and have sunk to the level of vulgar rudeness. Our retaliatory steps in the US and EU are well known," Lavrov said.
Nevertheless, Russia, as the Minister said, is trying to pursue a multi-vector foreign policy, to build up interaction with those who are open to honest joint work on the principles of equality, mutual respect and a balance of interests. The overwhelming majority of such international partners we have are in Eurasia, Africa and Latin America. Among them are our friends and allies in the EAEU, CSTO, CIS, BRICS and SCO," the Foreign Minister concluded.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
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Based on materials from TASS