West’s Slogans Change, But Goal of Bending World to Its Will Remain Unchanged – Lavrov

Lavrov had a lot of important things to say. Sputnik brings you the most important highlights.

Biggest Problem Facing Humanity

The Russian top diplomat cited the West’s seemingly insatiable drive to dominate of other nations as one of the key factors standing in the way of harmonious global development.
Russia, he said, has to “deal with the constant desire of the Western minority for military-political and financial-economic expansion. The slogans change, from globalization and Westernization to Americanization, universalization, liberalization, etc. But the essence remains the same: to subjugate all independent actors to their will, to force them to play by rules that benefit the West,” Lavrov said.

According to Lavrov, Washington and its allies are seeking to slow down “or even reverse” the evolution of the international affairs to prevent the emergence of a multipolar order and a “more just architecture of international affairs,” which Russia sees as its “mission” to support.
“The West has people leading it today such as Josep Borrell [the European Union’s foreign policy chief, ed.] which divide the world into their ‘flowering garden’ and the ‘jungle,’ where, in their view, most of humanity resides. With such a racist worldview (and I’m not afraid to use this word), it is of course difficult to come to terms with the arrival of multipolarity. The political and economic establishment in Europe and the United States is right to fear that the transition to a multipolar system will be associated with serious geopolitical and economic losses for them, including the final breakdown of globalization in its current, Western-crafted form. First and foremost, they are afraid of the prospect of losing the opportunity to live parasitically off the rest of the world, ensuring faster economic growth for themselves at the expense of the rest of the world,” the Russian top diplomat said.

No One to Blame But Themselves

Pointing to what he characterized as the “professional degradation” of the current crop of Western leaders, and their inability to correctly analyze events and predict trends, Lavrov emphasized that the “ill-conceived” policy of the US and its allies turned the “full-scale European security crisis” presently playing out in Ukraine into an inevitability.
Russia, proceeding from the new Foreign Policy Concept released in March, strives to create the conditions necessary for the “peaceful and progressive development of humanity based on a unifying agenda,” Lavrov said, with one of the key goals being to “revive” the United Nations’ ability to return to a “central role” in harmonizing the interests of member states.
“We are far from alone in pursuing this goal. More and more countries of the Global South and East are starting to realize and formulate visions of their national interests, to pursue a policy focused on their implementation in the spirit of international cooperation. These nations are increasingly insisting on the creation of a more just world order – through reforming existing interaction formats, or creating new ones, to solve specific problems in the fields of security and development. Russia supports this trend based on the clear understanding that the future lies with it,” Lavrov said.

Highlighting the growing threat of a global nuclear catastrophe stemming from the prospect of a direct Russia-NATO clash in Ukraine, Lavrov emphasized that at its core, the risks stem from the Western alliance’s “gross violation” of the principles of indivisible security, and a desire to see Russia’s “strategic defeat” in the proxy war in Ukraine.
The Russian top diplomat stressed that Russia’s nuclear doctrine was and remains “purely defensive in nature,” and “aimed at maintaining the minimum necessary nuclear force potential to guarantee the defense of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the state, and prevent aggression against Russia and its allies.”
“In the context of deterrence, the possession of nuclear weapons is presently the only possible response to some of the major external threats to the security of our country. The situation around Ukraine has only served to confirm the validity of our concerns in this area,” Lavrov said, with a “great danger” posed by the US and NATO’s drive toward escalation resulting in “direct armed clashes between nuclear powers. We believe that such a development can and should be prevented. Therefore, we are forced to remind and send sobering signals to our opponents of the existence of these extreme military-political risks.”
In the meantime, he said, Moscow will continue to adhere to the view that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, and to urge other nuclear states to “maintain adherence to these understandings and to exercise maximum restraint.”

Crisis Has Unmasked the West

The crisis in relations between Russia and the West has created considerable risks, but also at least one benefit, Lavrov believes, with the majority of the world getting a unique “opportunity to see the true face of those who claimed almost a monopoly on the right to determine ‘universal values’.”
Lavrov stressed that the Ukrainian crisis didn’t start in 2022, with Western countries spending “many years” working to turn Russia’s neighbors into military footholds hostile to Moscow, “nurturing a whole generation of politicians preparing to declare war on our common history, culture, and in general everything Russian.”

“Western leaders have openly admitted that they did not plan to implement the Minsk Agreements aimed at resolving the conflict in Ukraine. In reality, they only stalled for time to prepare for a military scenario while pumping Kiev up with arms,” Lavrov said, referring to recent revelations by former leaders of Ukraine, France and Germany regarding the Minsk deal.