Colleagues,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Organisers and guests,
I am delighted to be able to address the Primakov Readings again and to take part in discussions with the leading experts from Russia and other countries. I would like to say that, despite the difficulties all of you are aware of, the Readings have again brought together numerous participants, including from other countries, as I have been told and as I can see, because there are many of my colleagues in the audience.
There is great demand in Russia and across the world for an intelligent discussion of possible solutions. Since it has not been launched in the official political quarters, we hope that an intelligent discussion will be held in the expert community to the benefit of all of us.
Our annual meetings are intrinsically connected with Yevgeny Primakov. In the mid-1990s, when everybody viewed the future of the world as “the end of history,” he put forth the revolutionary concept of multipolarity. I would like to note that Yevgeny Primakov not only did that in his theoretical writings but also translated it into practice by proposing the idea of the group of three – Russia, India and China (RIC), which turned out to be the blueprint for BRICS. Few people know that RIC is still operating. Our three countries continue to hold meetings at the level of foreign ministers. That format led to the establishment of BRICS, which is an object of considerable attention. Many countries would like to become full members of the group. If we satisfy their requests, the group will have 15-17 members, as the June summit held by our Chinese friends via videoconference has shown. Anyway, the current global developments and the principal trend of the global shift towards multipolarity reflect the ideas which Yevgeny Primakov put forth a long time ago. We are actively promoting them. Everything that is taking place now is proof that his ideas were correct.
As for the current situation in the world, I am sure that all of you have read the address delivered by President Vladimir Putin at the recent meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club. I would like to provide practical examples of the ideas that have recently been put forth by the Russian leadership.
It is obvious that the ongoing deregulation of the international system of relations is rooted in the unwillingness of the Western minority to abandon its hegemonistic aspirations and to accept the multipolar reality. It is clear that the line-up of forces on the global stage is not changing in its favour. That is why the US-led collective West is doing its best to keep its dominant positions. Of course, it is difficult to break off the habits they have grown used to over five centuries.
Multipolarity will not assert itself tomorrow or the day after. The establishment of the multipolar world as the generally recognised basis for the subsequent operation of the international community will take a historically long time. Everyone is aware of the reason for this. We are endeavouring to accelerate these processes. On the one hand, they are objective, historically substantiated and inevitable. On the other hand, efforts are being taken to slow these processes down as much as possible, so as to extend their privileged life and to continue receiving “the rent paid to the hegemon” as long as possible, as President Putin said.
The West is ready to go to any length to attain its goals. When it suits their purposes or is necessary to destabilise markets or seize a country’s natural wealth, they declare territories located tens of thousands of miles from the American coast as zones of their vital interests. This happened in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan, where the irrational and incompetent 20-year-long troop deployment ended in a fiasco for NATO.
Nevertheless, despite the fact that in Afghanistan NATO has again failed to justify its existence, the bloc’s expansion remains the primary Western motive in relations both with Russia, the post-Soviet and post-Warsaw Pact countries, nearly all of which have been taken over by NATO, and in relations with the other parts of the world.
NATO, including its officials and representatives of the United States as the bloc’s leading country, has unceremoniously refused, without as much as a blush, to recognise the non-expansion to the East promise they gave to Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. There is a lot of evidence of their lies. “Respected” Western – American, German and British – politicians of that period cite themselves and their colleagues in their memoirs, confirming that they made that verbal but solemn and iron-clad promise. A British politician has written in his memoirs that they had made the promises, but nobody intended to implement them, because they only needed to defuse the situation. At least he was honest. UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said several years after the invasion of Iraq that they had not found weapons of mass destruction there, that it was a mistake but then, nobody is perfect. There have been too many instances when they were not perfect.
In addition to verbal promises not to expand NATO to the east, top-level binding documents were signed. I am talking about the 1999 OSCE summit in Istanbul whose participants formalised the indivisible security issue. This was done in the follow-up to the 1990 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), not the OSCE summit in Paris. At that time, the summit participants declared a new era, noted that Europe was no longer divided, that, from now on, everyone would be united, and that Europe would share common values between the Atlantic Ocean and the Ural region, and later the Pacific Ocean. The participants in the Istanbul summit formulated indivisible security as a fundamental principle in the OSCE’s work. Based on this, no country or organisation can strengthen its own security at the expense of others. The document contains an important addendum noting that no organisation can claim the right to play a dominant security role in the OSCE region.
In 2010, all this was confirmed word for word at the OSCE summit in Astana, and these provisions remain unrefuted. After the Istanbul summit, we began saying that these obligations were not being honoured, and that something must be done. They continued to expand NATO and said their actions did not infringe on Russia’s security. We replied that we had a right to decide what security and balance means to us. The same concerns our concept of coexisting with our neighbours and how we see ourselves in this world. This did not produce any results.
Recently, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby noted that the United States saw no threats to Russia’s security, that it is easier to see a threat to US security across the Atlantic Ocean in Iraq or Libya than to believe that Russia has the intellectual potential to assess various developments and to decide what will benefit or threaten it.
They interpret their political obligations superficially like this, and we therefore suggested formalising them at the presidential and prime minister level and to make them politically and legally binding. We suggested this several times. In 2008, we suggested signing the European Security Treaty, and they rejected our proposal, rather impolitely. We continued to press for a specific response. In the long run, they told us in the mid-2010s, following the Astana summit, that we should stop promoting our ideas on legal security guarantees because such guarantees can only be provided to NATO members. The West rejected our draft European Security Treaty.
Later, we made other attempts, including in December 2021. We submitted two documents, including a Russian-US treaty and an agreement between Russia and NATO. We suggested formalising and codifying the decisions of the 1990s and those of the Istanbul, Astana and Paris summits in these documents. They did not listen to us. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that the West should support only one aspect of the indivisible security concept, the right of each country to choose specific alliances. They rejected the inalienable part of this formula which states that this may not be done because it impairs the security of another country. They also ignored another part of the formula which expressly says that no organisation has the right to dominate this region. Meanwhile, NATO is now claiming its right to dominate Europe and many other regions.
NATO proclaimed a new concept at its Madrid summit in June this year. The organisation’s sphere of responsibility now includes the Indo-Pacific region, as it is called in the West, which implies, in plain English, setting India against China. They make no secret of this. They have even formulated a concept of indivisible security, although not as it was formulated by the OSCE. They say that Euro-Atlantic security is indivisible from Indo-Pacific security. Japan has actively supported this concept. The concept provides justification for NATO’s infiltration in the Indo-Pacific region and the establishment of NATO-centric structures there, which in ordinary terms means the Asia-Pacific region. In the past, NATO claimed to be a defensive alliance, and it was clear that it was defending itself against the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries. NATO continued to claim that it was a defensive alliance even after their dissolution, although its lines of defence have moved east five times. It was impossible to make them say who they were defending themselves from.
If the bloc gains a foothold in the Asia-Pacific region, which can happen very quickly, they will say again that it is a defence line and that NATO is a defensive alliance, but the line of defence will be in the South China Sea. NATO-like military blocs such as AUKUS are expanding through the involvement of Japan, South Korea and New Zealand and the creation of “partnerships for maritime domain awareness.” It is an obvious attempt to put distance between ASEAN and China, and to stop their dialogue on the South China Sea, to snatch the initiative and decide the matter without China. They are trying to involve the ASEAN nations that are liable to accept this approach. There are certain fine points. The West regards half of ASEAN nations as promising in terms of detaching them from the 10 nations, disrupting ASEAN’s unity and undermining the structures that have been created in the region around the association over decades on the basis of consensus and general agreement. I am referring to the ASEAN Regional Forum for security, the ADMM-Plus platform for ASEAN and its Dialogue Partners, and the East Asia Summit, which the 10 ASEAN nations and their eight Dialogue Partners hold every year.
As for the current goals of NATO and the West with regard to Russia, they are acting on Brzezinski’s premise that with Ukraine, Russia is an empire and without Ukraine, it is a regional power. This did not begin in 2022 or even in 2014. Elections were held in Ukraine in 2004. The West regarded the presidential candidate who won the second round as pro-Russian. The pro-Western candidate lost the race. What did the West do? The presidents of European countries, including Poland and Lithuania, as well as the EU foreign policy and security chief and the OSCE Secretary General, went to Kiev. Following the talks held there, the Kiev authorities decided to give one more chance to the opposition at the third round of the election. The decision was taken by the Constitutional Court, although the Ukrainian Constitution does not allow for the possibility of three rounds and says that the results must be considered final after the second round, especially since international observers were monitoring the election. This is when it all began. It was the first “Maidan revolt” and a violation of Ukraine’s Constitution.
At the Bucharest summit in 2008, they promised that Ukraine and Georgia would be able to join NATO. What did they do this for? They launched the process of turning Ukraine into a bridgehead for containing Russia and for creating military threats to it. We can say this now with absolute certainty. There are more than enough hard facts.
In 2008, Mikheil Saakashvili, swooning at the promise of NATO membership, decided to seize South Ossetia and Abkhazia, areas where OSCE and UN peacekeeping operations were underway. You know what this has led to.
Next came the turn of Ukraine and a new “Maidan revolt” orchestrated by the United States. American representatives coordinated the lists of those who would sit on the Ukrainian government after the state coup. I would like to remind you of a bugged telephone conversation that leaked on the internet, during which Victoria Nuland, then in charge of Ukraine at the US State Department, said the names of future government members to the US ambassador. Do you remember her reply when the ambassador said the EU did not like one of the candidates? And this is exactly what the United States is doing.
Talks were launched. The Europeans, represented by France, Germany and Poland, guaranteed the agreement signed between President Viktor Yanukovych and the opposition. There were “outstanding” personalities among the opposition such as head of the Svoboda (Freedom) Party Oleg Tyagnibok, who openly and publicly called for murdering Muscovites, Yids and Poles. Nevertheless, he was regarded as an acceptable participant in the talks. The agreement was approved and guaranteed by the European countries. The next morning, it was violated. No attempt was made to appeal to the opposition’s sense of conscience or to convince them that they would come to power in several months. I would like to remind you that the agreement stipulated an early presidential election, which Yanukovych would have definitely lost. But nobody spoke out or called the opposition to order when the opposition, which began by seizing government buildings contrary to the EU’s guarantees, demanded that the regional status of the Russian language be cancelled. That did not happen immediately but much later. But the instincts of those who seized power in Ukraine in violation of the EU’s guarantees became clear. They later became obvious when Dmitry Yarosh and his far-right extremists from the Right Sector called for throwing Russians out of Crimea, where “friendship trains” were sent to seize Crimea’s Supreme Soviet. The West kept silent when nearly 50 people were burned alive in the House of Trade Unions in Odessa on May 2, 2014, or when Ukrainian aircraft bombed the centre of Lugansk under President Poroshenko on June 2, 2014. The footage was shown on television, but the West did not react in any way.
This prompted us to reach the conclusion, although not final at the time, that the West needed all of that and that it had signed a “social pact” with the Ukrainian Nazis to destroy everything that was Russian in Ukraine, including the Russian language and culture, system of education, the media, history and relations with Russia and other parts of the Russian world. We saw that Ukraine was being prepared to fight against Russia to undermine its influence in the region and the world. For its part, the West decided to turn a blind eye to corruption and thievery, which these persons had long been known for, pump money and weapons into Ukraine and otherwise support this “project.” I see no other explanation. There are too many facts pointing in this direction.
And then the Minsk agreements were signed. Ukraine trampled on the guarantees of Germany and France once again. Petr Poroshenko has admitted that he never intended to implement them. He only needed time to get more weapons to attack Russia and seize Crimea. Vladimir Zelensky did not plan to honour them either, though he confirmed his commitment to the Minsk agreements verbally. The leaders of Germany and France invited him to Paris in December 2019, where he signed a pledge to launch a direct dialogue with Donetsk and Lugansk and to permanently formalise the special status of these regions in Ukrainian law. But today Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine Alexei Danilov says they needed more time and did not plan to implement the agreements. They have again showed complete disregard for Germany, France and their guarantees.
As for the humiliations showered on the EU, not only Ukraine acted insolently (the Kiev regime did this under the benevolent eye of its American handlers), but also less significant players such as the Kosovo Albanians. [Prime Minister] Albin Kurti said that he was not interested in reviving the Pristina-Belgrade dialogue. Back in 2013, when the Maidan movement was rising in Ukraine, the EU mediated a Pristina-Belgrade agreement on the creation of the Community of Serb Municipalities of Kosovo. The idea seems to have been buried. Germany and France, which co-authored that momentous decision, as it was described, no longer want to promote it and are trying to force new decisions and a new concept for the agreement on Belgrade, under which Serbia does not have to recognise Kosovo as an independent state but should accept its admission to any international organisation. A simple combination designed to dupe simple-minded people.
The Community of Serb Municipalities in Kosovo was key for Belgrade to continue negotiations with Pristina. Germany and France played a leading role both in the Kosovo issue and in the Minsk agreements. What did the special status for Donbass mean in the Minsk agreements? The right to use their own language in all areas. That was not something unheard of under international conventions; that was a mandatory right. Next, there was the right to have their own law enforcement agencies, the right to approve the appointment of judges and prosecutors, and to establish simplified economic ties with the neighbouring regions of the Russian Federation. The decision to establish the Community of Serb Municipalities in Kosovo contained these same clauses, almost word-for word. In both cases, the EU was the guarantor, that guarantor was humiliated when those requests were arrogantly denied without explanation. They saw no need to explain. The EU did not ask either Kiev or Pristina why they refused to fulfil what they signed. That was the story.
The European Union probably thinks this behaviour should have earned it favours from the United States; over the past 18 months, that country has literally made the entire West line up at attention, and be sure to toe the line. No one even tried to challenge this, and even the timid calls for EU strategic autonomy have been stifled. All we see is the show of bravura and unacceptable statements unreasonably declaring themselves exceptional. Remember Josep Borrell’s “Europe is a beautiful garden” and “the rest of the world is a jungle” metaphor?
What is happening with Europe now is a consequence of the crisis that started during the pandemic, when the United States began to address its problems by issuing more fiat money and buying up available goods for a rainy day. Climate initiatives played a negative role, too; they were poorly planned. They were implemented in an unprofessional, amateurish fashion.
Things were further aggravated by the US’ illegitimate sanctions introduced after Russia spent years trying to explain they could not go on creating threats to Russia’s security right on our borders (or anywhere across the ocean, for that matter), after our numerous efforts to fulfil political commitments made at the highest level in the OSCE and to codify them. The only answer we got was an arrogant “no,” while Ukraine continued to be pumped with weapons, and NATO planned to establish more military bases, including on the Sea of Azov (those who are good at geography can imagine the implications for Russia).
More Pentagon-funded biological weapon laboratories were built (there are dozens of them in Ukraine), and that created another major problem. Now the Americans are flopping about like a landed fish, as we say, trying as hard as they can to dodge this discussion. When our armed forces first seized the relevant documents in Ukraine, Victoria Nuland said at the hearings in the Senate it was vital “to prevent these research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces.” That was a full confession and acknowledging of guilt, or at least an indication that there was something to investigate. But neither the UN Security Council, nor the conference of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction can be bothered.
We have noted a trend that we describe as the privatisation of the secretariats of international organisations. This trend has been especially distinct at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, where the Western countries have completely subjugated the Secretariat to their needs and, in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, endowed it with the authority to name a guilty party (which is outside its mandate). This is the exclusive prerogative of the UN Security Council.
The Westerners are trying to manipulate the UN Secretary General by reviving the 1980 resolution, which mentioned the possibility of involving the Secretariat in the investigation of problems in the field of chemical and biological weapons proliferation. This has been mothballed for 40 years, but they are recalling it at exactly the time when we are insisting on creating a mechanism that will include the states parties to the BTWC (not in the Secretariat) to ensure transparency and accountability with regard to each state party’s activity outside their territory.
They suppress their rivals everywhere. It is not just Russia; they started pushing us out of energy markets long ago, not just this year and not “yesterday.” Look at the Third Energy Package of 2009 that specifically aimed to hamper the development of the Nord Stream 1 project. In 2012-2016, they forbade Germany to use more than 50 percent of the OPAL oil pipeline that extends the Nord Stream route. This is complete nonsense. The Russian pipeline was the only source of gas. They cited requirements that no one should be allowed to use more than 50 percent of these pipeline systems because of the need to combat monopolism. This is discrimination. In 2019, they passed amendments to the Third Energy Package. In an unprecedented move, and contrary to the official opinion of EU attorneys, they extended the discriminatory rules of this package to the Nord Stream 2 project, after the fact.
I am not even talking about the explosions. You can debate endlessly as to who profits from this outrage. Any thinking person can see what this is all about, even though they say that Sweden, Germany and Denmark allowed Nord Stream AG to investigate, these countries turned down the Russian Government’s proposal to conduct a joint investigation. Even though the pipes are Russian, they did not allow us to join in.
Nor did they allow Malaysia to take part in investigating the July 2014 downing of the Malaysia Airlines flight. At that time, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium and Ukraine set up an investigation team, but they did not invite Malaysia. They invited it only five months later as a part-time, rather than full-time, participant. We are still trying to learn the truth. For example, we want to know why US satellite data, accepted by the Dutch court and serving to corroborate its theory, remains classified. In an amazing decision, the court provided reference materials on this data, as if this was enough. This is Anglo-Saxon law for you, or whatever it’s called now.
We have been unable to get a response to our inquiries about what happened to the Skripal family. The same is true of our many inquiries to Sweden, France and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) as to why they are not showing us the results of Alexey Navalny’s medical tests (used to back allegations that he had been poisoned in Russia). In 2007, we also requested information following the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko who died in a London hospital in 2006. They told us that it had been decided to hold a public trial on this case, which means there would be classified documents which may not be unveiled for public scrutiny. This has become a trend.
We are seeing the same situation with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Although no one is saying “highly likely” here, I can note that, during the rare contacts between foreign leaders and Russia, when asked why they are not trying to find out the truth, they tell us that their secret services believe that the Russians did this. President of Russia Vladimir Putin has openly responded to such accusations more than once. The level of analytical reports and a willingness to sacrifice sober logic to timeserving considerations exceeds all normal expectations.
Nor should we forget that Europe is now doing more than the United States. President of France Emmanuel Macron flew to Washington to try to convince US President Joe Biden to make concessions to Europe during the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act that creates unprecedented advantages for US-based industrial companies. The French Minister of the Economy has repeatedly noted the fact that industrial enterprises pay four times less for gas than their French partners. This act promotes the deindustrialisation of Europe because industrial companies will rush to obtain subsidies and more privileged terms in the United States. All this continues.
We should not forget about the creation of AUKUS following a decision to deprive France of a $56 billion defence contract and to cede that contract to “reliable” Anglo-Saxon partners. I am not gloating over this; I want to show the predatory nature of current global developments as they have forgotten about competition, the presumption of innocence and the free market. This does not come down to the economy alone.
They are banning Russian athletes, including Paralympic athletes, from competitions. When Thomas Bach says that the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris will be unique, and that they will be open to everyone without politicisation, he does not mean all athletes, only trans-gender athletes. I consider this a disgrace for the International Olympic Committee. The World Anti-Doping Agency is acting under the same principles. It is absolutely obvious that it is trying to undermine rivals from the Russian Federation. Yes, nobody is perfect and everyone has skeletons in the closet. Every country commits violations like this. They treat athletes from other countries, suspected of doping, rather leniently, but they crack down on Russian athletes. I believe that everyone can see the difference.
It is obvious that we are realigning our foreign policy and foreign trade. We no longer want to remain under the illusion that the West, having proved to be completely unreliable, deceitful and impossible to negotiate with, will conscientiously participate in the globalisation processes or even mechanisms of its own making, or that it will not exploit them crudely and impudently as it has with the dollar, the euro, the international monetary and financial system, and the WTO’s blocked activity. Perhaps, globalisation American style is finished. Yes, there are some rudimentary processes that we have to go through, inevitably. Simultaneously, a new financial and logistics system is being formed that will be independent from our former Western colleagues’ whims and feeling of superiority. We do have true partners: in BRICS, the SCO, the EAEU, the CIS. The CSTO is also an important mechanism that contributes to security across the post-Soviet territory it covers.
Speaking of promoting new formats, let’s not forget that six years ago, President of Russia Vladimir Putin spoke about the Eurasian continent and taking advantage of the trends in Asia and the Pacific region of becoming the drivers of global growth. He said we must not lose the natural competitive advantage of the Eurasian countries. Eurasia is a huge continent with the largest population. Its location is so advantageous in terms of geopolitics and the geo-economy that the benefit of joining their efforts is obvious to everybody. We have proposed forming a network for mutually beneficial cooperation with all the regional integration associations across Eurasia (I mentioned the EAEU, the SCO and ASEAN), cooperation through promoting shared approaches rather than imposing artificial frameworks such as Indo-Pacific concepts. We call this process the Greater Eurasian Partnership. In addition to the three organisations I mentioned, this process must be open to all countries in Eurasia without exception, including Europe. But this is the next stage.
We have people to work with and to count on. We see attempts to throw our reliable partners off the right course. Without a twinge of conscience, the Americans go around the world and, as many of you may have noticed, ramble that they (Americans, not Ukraine) will win and there is no reason to worry. They know that other countries are bearing losses from these sanctions and yet, they should not help Russia bypass the sanctions, refusing non-conventional alternative methods, because the Americans can allegedly compensate the losses with plenty to spare. Yes, that is what they say. I know this for a fact. They blatantly say this even to our closest allies. There are countries and people that are subject to psychological pressure and may fall to temptation and sit it out. That is their choice. In the long term (and even in the mid-term) this choice will be self-defeating for their economic development and sovereignty. The (many) countries and civilisations with long histories are told that they will be thrown a carrot and that if they comply with the sanctions they will even gain certain benefits. In addition to these purely pragmatic (and, in a way, cynical) considerations, a number of countries have self-respect. In early 2022 (after the special military operation began), US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman visited India and spoke at a news conference, trying to convince India to join the sanctions. She said that they talked and must explain where India’s interests lie. This is how they treat their partners that are considered great powers. We don’t have to describe how they treat smaller countries.
We are not making a tragedy out of the current situation. I believe this is a problem for Western civilisation and its world order, which has relied on the principles of globalisation pushed by the Americans. This system has completely discredited itself as unable to uphold agreements or to inspire respect or a desire to preserve its principles and mechanisms. If tomorrow it becomes clear that there is something new Washington does not like, it will pursue a new approach without a grain of thought or concern even for its own allies.
We want to change the format of our entire work. They say we are turning away from the West to face the East. We are not turning away as it was the West who ended cooperation with us and built a wall. We work with those who are ready. If new leaders of Western countries or structures created in Europe and the United States can see beyond their two-year electoral cycles and see into the depths (rather than wishing to put somebody’s son behind bars or prove somebody’s incompetence and doing nothing else), we will be ready to talk seriously.
While we are waiting for this bright day, it is always a pleasure to speak with reasonable people from the expert community. And my beliefs are strengthened when I attend various political forums. Retired ministers analyse the current events reasonably, constructively, substantively and responsibly. Many of them were not allowed to do so while they held official posts.
Question: Thank you for your well-founded, frank and candid analysis of the current international situation. Most of the participants in the 7th Primakov Readings come from the south and east. Some flew in on direct flights from Baku, Yerevan, Tashkent, and Astana. Others, who came from other parts of the world, like Sofia, Berlin, Geneva, or Boston, were inconvenienced by having to make connecting flights in Dubai or Istanbul. Clearly, you know this first-hand from your business travel in the form of a cordon sanitaire made of East European countries. You have mentioned this, but I think we need to take a closer look and reassess our foreign policy assets and draw a line between core assets and non-core assets and decide accordingly. Do you agree?
Sergey Lavrov: Yes, Mr Dynkin. I read your interview the other day, including on this issue. If they shut down contacts for us, we will never chase them or beg them to change their minds at a time when our diplomats have, in fact, become targets of terrorist attacks. These things happened. We do not leave them unanswered. We analyse these developments and come up with specific proposals in matters that clearly lie on the surface.
Speaking of core and non-core assets, it is hard to get rid of non-core assets overnight. After all, it’s about a physical presence in many countries around the world (speaking of the West) and many, many buildings, especially in Europe. It dates back to the Soviet Union and involves a range of legal processes that cannot be stopped abruptly. At least, now. We depend on the contracts concluded on the basis of Western law (Anglo-Saxon and Continental). This is a fact. It cannot be done overnight.
What we are doing is we transfer people from the West to the East, Asia, the CIS (our priority), Africa, and Latin America. We are reinforcing functional departments such as the Information and Press Department, the Asian and Pacific Cooperation Department, and the Department of International Organisations (since the UN is now a venue for daily battles). I am convinced that it is important to keep making public the enormous amount of evidence that reveals the duplicity of the West and the criminal nature of the Kiev regime and those who are behind it and pit it against Russia and Belarus. Intellectual repurposing is already underway. A special meeting of the collegium on this issue is scheduled for next month. Our subordinate education institutions (MGIMO and the Diplomatic Academy) and non-governmental agencies that were founded by the Russian Foreign Ministry such as the Russian International Affairs Council, the Alexander Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Fund, the Fund for Supporting and Protecting the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad, and the Russkiy Mir Foundation, where the Foreign Ministry acts as a co-founder in conjunction with the Ministry of Education and Science. This will come as a conceptual and documentary formal process of repurposing in the geopolitical and geo-economic sense.
Until the end of December, we will hold a joint meeting of the Collegium of the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Economic Development on repurposing foreign economic activities from the perspective of coordinating embassies, trade missions and offices of the Russian Export Centre and large Russian state-run companies in respective countries. Matters of coordination have never been shelved, but their importance has increased many times over lately.
With regard to physical relocation of staff from the West to the East (or to the above functional areas), the fact that, in a fit of anger, the West declared hundreds of our employees personae non grata “helped” a lot. The vast majority of these employees are seasoned, competent and capable diplomats. Their experience and knowledge will be put to good use, and 95 percent of the staff members who left have already been placed. They did not necessarily return from foreign countries to Moscow, but also got new jobs in other areas of responsibility and competence. Clearly, it will take time. It’s like turning a ship around. When it’s set on a new course, it can’t be stopped.
Question: When you are referring to a multipolar world, now in an increasingly fractured scenario, how do you define a “pole”?
Sergey Lavrov: In referring to a pole in a multipolar world, you did not mention possession of nuclear weapons, this is good. You can write up a formula and say that to join a certain political group you need to meet certain criteria and cannot skip anything. But I do not think it will be this way. It is natural when a country becomes a leader in a region, and then on the global stage. The qualities of a leader are obvious.
I think that India is currently one of the leading countries in terms of economic growth, maybe even the leader. Its population will soon be bigger than that of any other country. New Delhi has vast diplomatic experience in settling various kinds of problems, as well as authority and a reputation in its region. It is part of a range of integration structures in South Asia, within the SCO, and of course, it takes an active role in the UN. In a natural way, India is one of the countries that not only aspires to be, but is at the essence of the forming of a multipolar world as one of its most important poles.
The same can be said about Brazil when it comes to how to reflect multipolarity within a reformed UN Security Council. In recent years, India and Brazil have been promoting their applications to join the UN Security Council together with Japan and Germany, which is a sign of multipolarity. A G4 group of sorts. We see what added value India and Brazil can bring to the UN Security Council knowing their stances on global and regional issues.
We do not see any added value in accepting Germany or Japan as permanent members of this UN body. We have not seen any policy differences between these countries and the US and NATO over the years. The Japanese also adamantly refuse to admit the results of the Second World War, which the UN is built on. The UN Charter says that all decisions made by the victor countries are accepted by all the other member states. Japan joined the UN, ratified the Charter and is still violating one of its key provisions.
Germany allegedly accepted the results of the Second World War and made an apology. But what is worrying is that a special form of racism is emerging there and Russophobia is fostered. This is happening all across Europe with rare exceptions, but Germany is a special case. Long before the current events, in our contacts with German diplomats and politicians, we saw an interesting message that was sent to us in various forms. The meaning was that “we, Germans, have long straightened our accounts with everyone and do not owe anyone anything anymore.” At some point, all debts are paid, and a new life begins. But there is reason to believe that this logic conceals a reluctance to suppress neo-Nazi sentiments in their country, in the Baltic states and in Ukraine, where Berlin fosters neo-Nazi trends, flagrant Russophobia and many other unacceptable things. For Russia, the mandatory requirement for being a member of the UN Security Council is its own view of the world and the ability to be independent and not obediently follow a course that is dictated from overseas, like when Germany was ordered to forget about Nord Stream 2 and it decided not to object.
Today, I read a story on how British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and US President Joe Biden signed an agreement on ensuring mutual energy security. In this document, everything relies on supplies of US energy carriers. The agreement guarantees that the United States and the United Kingdom pledge to supply their energy resources to the EU. This seems like a lucky coincidence: the Nord Stream pipelines have been damaged, Russian gas deliveries have stopped and some time later, the United States and the UK agreed to supply Europe with expensive US liquefied natural gas. Once again, Germany has no desire to defend its legitimate place.
Germany and France have always been the main driving forces in the EU. I have already mentioned an example when the EU was repeatedly humiliated following the failure of numerous initiatives on Ukraine and those regarding dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade. In June 2021, Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden held a summit in Geneva. After that, President of France Emmanuel Macron and the then German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested holding an EU-Russia summit. However, the Baltic and Polish “rookies” officially forbade them from doing so. Although these countries did not meet NATO criteria, they were dragged into the alliance. They told us that we should not worry because these countries still feared Russia, and because they still harboured a certain “post-Soviet syndrome,” and that they would feel safe and calm down after joining NATO and the EU. Did this happen? No, it did not. Instead of calming down, they are not letting the EU chart a course that would meet the national interests of the EU countries. Moreover, they are imposing an absolutely Russophobic US-backed agenda. They are working to fulfil the behests of the first NATO Secretary-General Lord Ismay, who wanted to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Everybody knows that the United States is staying in Europe. Contrary to all promises and agreements, military units and strike weapons are deployed along Russian borders. They are actively ousting Russia from Europe, and have wrecked relations between Russia and NATO. No matter what Jens Stoltenberg may say, Russia did not slam the door. It was he who forced all Russian employees to leave Brussels. It was pointless for five diplomats to stay there. As for keeping “the Germans down,” this plan has been exceeded. The United States now controls the entire EU. The logic remains the same. A timid attempt to resume dialogue between France and Germany is becoming even more timid, and those pursuing Washington’s policy are thwarting it.
Regarding the issue of multipolarity, we would like the EU to be a centre of a new multipolar world, and it is still possible. However, India, Brazil, the Persian Gulf countries and regional associations in Africa and Latin America have more reasons to become an equitable member of the multipolar world than the EU. The EU can take part in these processes on an equal footing, after it realises that it does not have to bend its knee to the United States, and that it has its own interests. These “voices” are making themselves heard. I am not trying to promote demarcation lines and to drive wedges. Obviously, some European interests do not coincide with the US position. Europe is unable to defend these interests. This, too, is a fact. In any event, the results (or no results) of French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Washington tend to support my viewpoint.
Question: As you know, there are many graduates of Soviet and Russian universities in Syria. We are grateful to MGIMO and the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, whose experts go to Syria to assess the situation and the country’s potential. Their conclusion is that there is great potential, especially for small businesses. On the one hand, this can serve as serious support for relations with Russia. Regrettably, other countries, such as Egypt, Türkiye and Germany, are using this to their advantage. Small business is very well developed in all areas in Syria. We hope that [Russia] can give it a boost.
Sergey Lavrov: This is not a question but a hope. I fully agree with you. Regrettably, Syria remains a victim of geopolitical manipulation. It began with the Arab Spring of 2011. Unlike in 2003, when France and Germany spoke out against the aggression in Iraq, the Arab Spring was largely promoted by Europe. The Americans were “leading from behind,” as Barack Obama said.
France was actively involved in the Libyan aggression or scheme then. Take a look at what took place in Tunisia, Syria, Libya, Egypt and several other countries. President of Egypt Hosni Mubarak was betrayed by his allies, with whom he worked for decades to maintain stability in the region. It came as a revelation. But nobody is surprised any longer. The Afghan authorities were likewise betrayed, left in the lurch overnight, like many others who linked their political future and the future of their countries to the United States. These lessons have been learned, although not by everybody so far.
We see a new series of courting and attempts to convince countries to join in, that all the costs will be offset, and nobody will suffer if only they join the sanctions.
There are foreign armed forces in Syria, those the Syrian government invited and those it did not. Given the history of Türkiye–Syria relations and Iran’s influence in Syria after the Arab League excluded Syria and has refused to redress its mistake, we believe that those who can really influence the situation on the ground should join forces and talk with President Bashar al-Assad and his government. This is how the Astana Troika of Russia, Türkiye and Iran was established. Despite the specifics of Damascus’ attitude towards the Türkish presence in Syria, that presence and the establishment of the Astana Troika were accepted as evidence of the need to conduct a meaningful dialogue. Agreements have been reached in Astana within different formats, including between Russia and Türkiye with the approval of the Syrian government, specifically on de-escalation zones, and these agreements have been implemented fairly quickly.
Concrete agreements on the Idlib de-escalation zone have been signed by the presidents of Russia and Türkiye to ensure separation from the terrorists operating there – the Tahrir al-Sham group and its offshoots. One of them is to identify the real opposition groups that are ready to talk with the government. No dialogue is possible with terrorists. There is also an agreement on unblocking the M4 Motorway, an agreement on joint patrols and several other concrete military subjects. The latter agreement is not fully honoured yet, as we have recently pointed out publicly. Our Türkish colleagues admit this but assure us that all these problems will be dealt with.
They mostly speak about the agreements our presidents have reached on northeast Syria, where Kurdish units and the Syrian Democratic Forces are settling. No matter what they are called, we understand what our colleagues are talking about. Türkiye regards them as hostile organisations. Some of them have been designated in Türkiye as terrorist. Their common feature is that they take advantage of US support provided through the US forces that are illegally deployed east of the Euphrates, where the illegal 50 km Al-Tanf base is located, contrary to perennial promises to close it. Nobody knows what is taking place there. According to available information, terrorists feel at home there, just like in the Rukban and Al-Hawl camps, from which terrorist attacks have recently been made.
Türkiye is worried that the Americans are cultivating Kurdish separatism there. This also concerns other countries with Kurdish minorities, because it is an extremely explosive issue. That is why one of the main issues of our communication with Damascus is a dialogue between the Kurds and Syria. The Kurds should be convinced to stop provocative separatist activities and discuss their life in the country where they have always lived peacefully with the Arabs and other ethnicities.
The Americans are trying to dissuade them. But they also say they are not interested in the collapse of Russa, which is not true either. US officials sometimes say that they want to weaken Russia. Likewise, they are interested in a separation of the Kurds including the establishment of an independent Kurdish state. They have always played according to the “divide and rule” principle. This is Anglo-Saxon logic. They are doing their best to talk the Kurds and the leaders of the Syrian Democratic Forces out of starting a dialogue with Damascus. Regrettably, Kurdish units think that the Americans are reliable partners. We have not forgotten what happened to Hosni Mubarak and the Afghan government. On the other hand, this is for them to decide.
We will be working hard to preclude any encroachment on the territorial integrity of Syria. This is the position of the Astana Troika, which was confirmed in a joint statement after a regular meeting. In the context of these agreements, we would like to see Türkiye and Syria, acting on the basis of the Adana agreement between them, resume a dialogue (conditions are developing for this) and address specific border security issues with due regard for the legitimate concerns of Türkiye, which recognised the Syrian government both under Hafez al-Assad and now.
Question: What will become of the Constitutional Committee? Is there any hope that this pause will end and it will resume it activities? What needs to be done to make it happen? The second question concerns the Middle East in general. Is there a risk that the Russia-West confrontation will shift to the Middle East?
Sergey Lavrov: With regard to the Constitutional Committee, Russia stood at its origins, together with Türkiye, Iran, the Syrian opposition and the government. We held a Syrian National Dialogue Congress in Sochi in January 2019. My colleagues and I were personally involved in drafting the final declaration. UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura took part in it as well. It was at that time that the initiative to create the Constitutional Committee emerged.
We are committed to this format, which the West is trying to discredit by saying that pro-government delegations are blocking and slowing down everything, and do not want agreements. It is important for both parties represented in the Constitutional Committee to strive for compromise. And we are doing our fair share. We have noted the proposals to this end made by the Damascus delegation and the additional steps taken by the Syrian leadership to create more favourable conditions for building confidence. Among other things, I’m referring to a sweeping amnesty that President Bashar al-Assad announced this spring.
The West is trying to substantially reinvent the concept of the Constitutional Committee. Instead of direct talks on reaching agreements on the issues at hand, it is now promoting an initiative put forward by the current UN Special Envoy Geir Pedersen. They refer to it as a “step for step approach,” which comes down to the following: let Damascus do something, and they will make sure the opposition does something to meet them halfway. Allegedly, the West will be willing to take some sanctions off the table. President Bashar al-Assad took a significant step and announced an amnesty. People were freed and resolved all matters related to their future life. We asked Mr Pedersen and our Western colleagues about the missing response to the unconditional step made by President al-Assad. No answer. We will inevitably face a situation where our efforts to achieve a fair agreement will be hampered every step of the way. The Small Group on Syria created as an answer to the Astana format is operating in the same vein. They are now trying to create extra mechanisms to divert attention from the Constitutional Committee and to divide the efforts. This is exactly the tactic they are using.
In addition to the meaningful task of achieving common approaches to reviewing constitutional issues, there are logistical issues as well. The matter is that Switzerland, which customarily hosted the Constitutional Committee meetings, joined the anti-Russia sanctions and thus completely and irrevocably undermined its neutral status and the image of a comfortable place for everyone to get together and discuss Russia-US strategic issues and the implementation of the START Treaty. It was a convenient place to meet and discuss matters of the South Caucasus as part of the Geneva discussions with the participation of Georgia, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and the countries represented in the organisations that are helping along. It was a good place for the Constitutional Committee meetings as well. We cannot send our delegation to a Constitutional Committee meeting on discriminatory terms. There is currently no direct air service. Initially, the Swiss wanted our diplomats to apply for visas, which is a violation of the procedures for visa-free travel for diplomatic passport holders. Responding to a request from the UN, we said we were ready to meet in any other place where we can come without being subjected to discriminatory requirements. Alternatively, the Swiss authorities should provide written legal guarantees of hassle-free issuance of visas and overflight of the aircraft with our delegation aboard. They told us they could guarantee the freedom of movement of our aircraft in Swiss airspace. But before we get to Switzerland, we need to cross the airspace of other European countries. We told them it was their problem and they should talk with these countries if they want to keep Geneva as a venue for the Constitutional Committee meetings.
With regard to the Middle East and whether there is a “time bomb” in Russia’s relations with the West, as far as the Western policies and Russia’s policies in the Middle East are concerned, the sailing has never been smooth. We saw and let everyone know about the explosive potential of the Arab Spring. It is the epitome of what the West wants to see in that region starting with the fact that there were no independent players like Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi. These were countries that are now commonly referred to as autocracies or dictatorships.
Indeed, these dictators cracked down on some freedoms. Yes, probably, there were things that are at odds with what is normally understood as human rights. But those were isolated instances. There were no hundreds of thousands of civilians killed during aggressive and reckless schemes in either country. Not in Afghanistan, either.
Iraq and Libya were prosperous countries. Indeed, there were not many freedoms in the sense freedom is interpreted in Europe or the United States, or in the sense they tried to construe in Qatar during the FIFA World Cup. There have never been any socioeconomic problems. People were well-off. The Libyan people enjoyed one of Africa’s highest incomes. Education was free, and petrol was dirt cheap. There were opportunities to study abroad. Someone just didn’t like Gaddafi. Saddam Hussein, though, was at the top of the list of objectionable leaders. The vial and the white powder set off the events that even British Prime Minister Tony Blair later apologised for. Apologies do little to fix things, and the country is still lying in shambles.
The situation with public bodies in Iraqi Kurdistan is not as bad as in Libya, but things in Kurdistan remain unresolved. Sunnis and Shiites in the Arab countries have not overcome their differences, either.
Remember, when the Americans invaded Iraq in 2003, George W. Bush, as soon as in May, announced on board an aircraft carrier that that was it and democracy had been established in Iraq. The year 2003 was marked by joy and celebrations. Where are we now? Then Paul Bremer was appointed head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. The first thing he did was disband all the bodies of the Sunni Ba’ath Party, the army and the police. The Ba’athist Sunnis, former military personnel, found themselves out of work overnight. The backbone of ISIS was made up of the former officers of the Saddam Hussein’s army due to the fact that the Americans had thoughtlessly fired them from all positions and they were no longer able to make a living. And no one was held accountable.
It was said in Libya that Muammar Gaddafi thought too highly of himself. He was asserting he was the leader of the entire African continent. Later, the reporters found out that he stood behind a candidate in the presidential race in France. Interestingly, this fact was supposed to be kept under wraps.
Russia and the Soviet Union have never been implicated in anything like this. Yes, we maintained relations, sought to create military ties, and supplied weapons. We built military bases and trained their military officers in our country. We have never nudged our partners in the Middle East to attack anyone. We did our best to help our friends in the Middle East, Africa and other regions defend themselves against potential external aggression.
We are ready to work with the West on the Middle Eastern matters. It was not us who froze the Russia-US-EU-UN quartet of mediators, which, with the UN Security Council’s approval, acted as the only legitimate mediating body for the Palestinian-Israeli settlement. The Americans want to do this all by themselves based on the premises that are drastically different from the UN-approved settlement principles, namely, a two-state solution, East Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state, the return of refugees, the cessation of settlement activity, etc. They are trying to replace these UNSC-approved principles with an approach that relies on an attempt to satisfy the Palestinians economically and to make them accept the fact that they will never have their own state.
It is not us who are dumping this format. Our offer to revive it has been on the table over the past three to four years. But this is not what the Americans have on their minds. They have a different concept now. The Abraham Accords are about turning Saudi Arabia’s Arab Peace Initiative upside down. It was approved by the Arab League and even the entire Islamic world at a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in Tehran. It envisaged creating a Palestinian state based on the UN principles and then normalising relations with Israel and establishing diplomatic relations by all Arab states. It started out under President Trump. Jared Kushner was in charge of this. They suggest that the Arab countries first establish diplomatic relations with Israel (those who have not done so yet) and then, after the entire Arab East normalises relations with Tel Aviv, the Palestinian problem will supposedly take care of itself.
We welcomed the normalisation of relations with the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco, noting that when announcing the achievement of agreements on diplomatic relations with Israel, each of these countries stressed that this does not mean they had changed their stance on creating the Palestinian state. We respect this consistent approach. But everyone can clearly see where the Americans are trying to take this whole process. This is something very different from what the UN decided on.
Question: You speak about the Istanbul charter that was adopted following the OSCE summit in Istanbul in 1999. It declares the indivisibility of security. At the same time, each state is free to choose its own way to ensure security. Indivisible security means that no state can ensure its security at the expense of others. If we apply these principles to all states that are geographically located between the Russian Federation and NATO – Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Belarus and Moldova – there is a dilemma that needs to be dealt with using various means (diplomacy, arms control). What do you think about this concept, these two conflicting principles?
Sergey Lavrov: There is no dilemma for us here, and there isn’t one for NATO either. NATO gave an answer to this question in 2008, eight years after the Istanbul Charter with its concept of indivisible security was signed. When NATO adopted the 2008 Bucharest declaration, which said that Georgia and Ukraine would be accepted into NATO, the authors of this document did not even think about how it complies with the obligations within the OSCE to ensure the principle of equal and indivisible security. They did not bother to think about it.
I have already given an example of how we tried to reach out to them. If the political obligations adopted in Istanbul don’t work, let us sign a legally binding agreement, we said. They said no: legal security guarantees could only be provided within NATO. They didn’t care an iota about formulas and dilemmas. The OSCE Charter says that each state has the right to choose its alliances, but then it says that it should not be done to the detriment of the security of others. We say, the expansion of NATO harms our security. And they said that we just don’t understand anything. John Kirby said again the other day that he does not see any reasons that could be used by Russia to justify that something is threatening it. And when Russian cities are shelled by US missiles, does this mean that nothing is threatening us? Or when we are told that they are giving Ukraine only defensive arms and advising against shelling the Russian territory. How can we communicate with these people? Just like when they promised to create the State of Palestine at some point.
Likewise, they promised to support the government of Hosni Mubarak, but soon afterwards they allowed the Muslim Brothers to arrest him and to transport him to court in a cage. They have made many promises. Therefore, I cannot agree with this.
The OSCE as an [international] organisation should have upheld the decisions of Istanbul and Astana on indivisible security. But the OSCE represented by its chairpersons-in-office and the current Secretary General is paying extremely little attention to that. The Polish foreign minister, who now holds the post of OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, said at the OSCE Ministerial Council in Lodz that the principle of consensus underlying the OSCE operation was inviolable. But it turns out that it has become difficult to apply it now. That is why they have decided to take “interim measures.” What does this mean? It is very simple. When they decided to use the OSCE, namely the Chairmanship-in-Office and the Secretariat, to fully comply with the Western policy on Ukraine, they knew that there could be no consensus on that matter, and the OSCE SMM cannot operate without consensus by default.
Former OSCE Secretary General Thomas Greminger remembers that Russia and a number of other CSTO counties have tried to streamline several procedures. One of the relevant issues has to do with the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). The criteria of its operation are obscure and unclear to the member states. They said several times that Russia had invited their observers to monitor elections and that they would like to send 800 observes. We replied that we cannot pay for so many people and that 400 would be enough. They said that in this case they would not send any observers. At the same time, they sent 30 observers to the United States, considering that no observers are allowed at the polling stations in half of the states under pain of arrest. But nobody writes about this. These inconsistencies raised many questions. We proposed adopting monitoring criteria once and for all, but they refused. The West told us that this is the “gold standard” (which they themselves have invented), and it is untouchable.
We had the same problem with the use of NGOs for humanitarian basket events. We proposed doing it as this is done at the UN, where the observer status is granted to an NGO that has been approved by a respective committee after presenting its programme. They refused. Public OSCE events have been held every year in Warsaw which anyone could attend. Some of these people were terrorists. Tajikistan complained that a blatantly terrorist organisation, which was listed as such in the country, freely attended these meetings. At the same time, NGOs from Crimea were not allowed to attend them. In other words, the door is open but not everyone will be allowed to enter. It is an obviously prejudiced approach.
Another thing we tried to improve was the system of extra-budgetary projects. When a country wants to finance an extra-budgetary project at any normal organisation, including the UN, it chooses a subject and coordinates it with the recipient country or countries. After that, the project in question is forwarded to the agency in charge of such matters for assessing its compliance with the organisation’s goals. This is how it is done everywhere except at the OSCE. For example, the United States wants to launch a civil society project in Armenia to train its journalists “the right way.” To do this through the OSCE, they only need to write a letter to the Secretary General or the Chairperson-in-Office, and it will be launched in Armenia as an OSCE project.
Many such projects with extra-budgetary funding have been launched with regard to Ukraine. All of them are called OSCE projects. This is a bomb, and not even a time bomb. It will blow up the OSCE very soon. It is being planted by the Poles, and our Swedish colleague, Ann Linde, was actively involved in this last year, even though OSCE chairpersons-in-office are supposed to be honest brokers. The decision was made at the Ministerial Council in Portugal back in 2002.
On January 1, 2023, North Macedonia will take over as the OSCE chair. I have sent a message to my North Macedonian colleague to congratulate him and to say that he would assume office at a difficult time for the organisation, because his predecessors not only created bad precedents and not only abused but openly disregarded the responsibilities of the chairperson-in-office. I also expressed hope that he would be aware of his responsibility not only for his country’s chairmanship but also for the OSCE’s future. I received an interesting reply. He has written that he remembers the decision of the Ministerial Council made in Portugal in 2002, but there are also such things as obligations to the EU and his country’s national laws. This is it. What does this have to do with the OSCE?
Question: I listened carefully to you. It seems that the West is equated with the United States in your remarks. Maybe I am reading it wrongly. But how do you see the diversity in the West? Europe is rich, Europe is not equal to the United States, and so on and so forth. But there is diversity inside Europe and the West. Furthermore, diversity in the United States. How do you see diversity in the United States in its global role and in its relationship with Russia?
The second question I [want to] ask as a veteran of multilateral diplomacy is [about] the attempt in the United Nations, especially through the General Assembly special meetings, to push Russia in a specific position. I mean, they had five meetings of this special emergency meeting. What is your plan to contain this process within in the United Nations? Thank you.
Sergey Lavrov: As for diversity – every society embraces diversity and pluralism, to an extent. In some, it really gets out of control. Sometimes this leads to excesses and clashes. How many more thousand “flowers” should bloom? But most countries regulate this democratic coexistence of diverse players in their national field, in one way or another.
In the US, we are also seeing these processes. Sometimes they become violent (not only in the United States, but in other countries, too). We remember the developments around Capitol Hill in Washington following the last presidential election. Hundreds of people were arrested, and that raised numerous concerns from the other part of American society that supported the Republicans. The trials are not over yet, but the prison sentences discussed there have come as a shock for many. The polarisation of society is very noticeable.
I have already mentioned the arguments that the parties resort to in the run-up to major political events (the recent mid-term elections, the next presidential vote we are approaching). We observe ad hominem attacks on both sides. There is a tendency to push politics and economics to the backburner. And when questions arise, they say, “that’s all because of Putin.” Surprisingly, they are not polarised in this matter. Only, Republicans would say, well, it’s because of Putin, of course, but first of all, Biden is to blame for this. Joe Biden, on the other hand, says that without him, Putin would have made everyone freeze and starve to death. I would not overestimate this polarisation of opinion, considering that the West is actually monolithic.
At this stage, it would probably be easier for us to confront a divided West. I think they are now beginning to suspect us of plotting to split the West when we say that Europe has lost its independence. As if we were “inciting” the Europeans [to defy the US]. This is not the case at all. We have always openly said what we wanted, we have been doing it for years. We were accused of plotting to bring some “Trojan horses” into the European Union. To that, we replied that we were interested in the European Union being an independent player. This is our sincere interest. And it has nothing to do with any designs to have that independent player fight the United States, not at all. Just to be independent. We wanted the obviously mutually beneficial cooperation projects in energy and industry, which were conceived as far back as in Soviet times, to work for Europe’s and for our benefit. Now those projects have been blown up, and the Anglo-Saxons did it, because cooperation between Europe and the Russian Federation is the last thing they needed. They were also blown up in a geopolitical sense, if you will.
That is why we want diversity. Diversity is present in our society. I do not see any risks here, only diversity should fit in the cultural framework and traditions held by society.
But there is also diversity of genders, and their number has exceeded 80 in Europe, in England. Last year in Sweden, when I attended an OSCE meeting, I asked where the lavatory was, and I was shown a door marked WC. I asked: “Is this one for ladies or for gentlemen?” I was told it was “for everyone.” I couldn’t believe it, but it was true. It’s just not what normal [people] do, it’s just so wrong, you have no idea.
I don’t know if I answered your question. I am confident that China, India, Russia, Iran – there is diversity in every country. The Arab world also encounters diversity that requires political attention. Sunnis and Shiites are mortal enemies. But even the King of Jordan proposed at a special summit in the early 2000s to consider Sunnis and Shiites as one nation professing one religion.
The UN General Assembly also embodies diversity but now there are attempts to suppress it. The West advocates democracy only when it comes to the issue of how other countries should live. It tells them that it will explain what it is all about. Its explanations are clumsy. Western-style democracy was imposed in Afghanistan for 20 years without any idea of how that country lived. Not a single conclusion was made from an enormous number of facts accessible to any more or less interested researcher. This was a fantastic testimonial showing how stupidly this policy was carried out and what it led to. Of course, its end was inglorious. But this is their hobby horse. They talk like this to everyone, in part, to their Asian partners whom they are now trying to include in the Central Asian Five. They talk like this with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, everybody. Here’s democracy and the rule of law and we will explain to you how to use all this. Hence, an enormous number of NGOs that coach people and tell them about the advanced experience of the Western democracies, in part, the modern interpretation of LGBT democracy – this is one of the main ideas they are trying to teach and instil in people’s minds. But try to talk to the Americans or Europeans about commitments under universal human rights documents. In the UN Human Rights Council, every state periodically reports on how it fulfils these commitments. This is clear. Let’s talk about democracy in the international arena. They say: What for? In their opinion, there are “rules” rather than international law. According to those “rules”, in one situation it is possible to act in one way, and in a different situation, in a different way.
Ukraine is a good example. Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown and the EU guarantees (given by Germany, France and Poland) were trampled underfoot. When we asked why they did not demand that the opposition fulfilled what it had signed, we were told that Yanukovych left Kiev. I said: he left Kiev but he left for a neighbouring city that was hosting his party’s congress. The coup in Yemen also took place in 2014. President of Yemen Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi did not go to another city. He fled to Saudi Arabia. Since then and until recently we all considered him a legitimate president and demanded the beginning of a peaceful settlement of the Yemeni crisis with the participation of lawful President Hadi and Ansar Allah (Houthis). It was only less than a year ago that our Saudi friends lobbied the adoption of a decision whereby the Yemeni sides established a Presidential Council and President Hadi transferred his powers. For seven years, he was considered a legitimate president. In his respect, the US used other rules than in Ukraine. An attempted coup took place in Gambia in the same year. I recall the official spokesman for the Department of State said in 2014 that the US would never recognise an illegal change of power. This was exactly at the time when it recognised the state coup in Ukraine. There are many examples of these “rules.”
The West is pushing through decisions on the creation of some “tribunal” for Russia, on reparations to be paid by confiscating the assets that belong to the Russian people and other issues. They are being discussed at the endless 11th emergency special session of the UN General Assembly. According to the UN Charter, only the Security Council can make all these decisions. The General Assembly is not authorised to adopt any of these decisions. This is not within its competence.
When the West was promoting a resolution on reparations, it used interesting arguments in talking to the developing nations. These nations told it that this was not legitimate. When it passes exclusively non-binding resolutions, the General Assembly cannot decide to take away sovereign reserves of a UN member. The West replied that it understood the limits of the General Assembly’s competences. In that case, this is strictly about the moral and ethical assessment of Russia’s actions – after all, these nations do not approve of Russia’s “invasion.” They just want to confirm that they take note of the continuing “occupation” and Ukraine wants these assets to be spent on its recovery. In other words, they try to persuade everyone who has any doubts that this would be simply a political statement. They will create a mechanism for confiscating Russia’s reserves and for the payment of reparations outside the UN. So, the UN is being used in the dark.
They are now trying to do the same with a new idea of creating an international “tribunal.” None of such decisions is legally binding. They are all null and void and will not oblige Russia or any other country to do anything. This is simply discrediting the UN General Assembly, its authority, reputation and functions.
Question: You said you consider President of France Emmanuel Macron a main driver in Europe. He recently returned from Washington and said any future treaty between Ukraine and Russia should be backed by Western security guarantees. What should these guarantees include?
Sergey Lavrov: It is hard to comment on this. Much was said about this today, and examples were cited. The 1990 Charter of Paris for a New Europe (speaking of Emmanuel Macron and France) said that from then on, everyone should feel secure, teach the same values and be equal. There is no communism and no ideological discord; we have a common home – Europe – from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and so on. This concept was outlined in more detail in Istanbul in 1999.
We discussed with our colleagues (including former OSCE Secretary General Thomas Greminger) what the OSCE countries had signed – that there should be equal and indivisible security. A country can choose an alliance, but nobody should enhance one’s own security at the expense of the security of others, and not a single organisation should claim to dominate Europe. The NATO states have violated all the basic ideas in this formula.
We made a last attempt to compel them to fulfil what they wanted to avoid (but what they had signed) in December 2021. We suggested a draft treaty between Russia and NATO and Russia and the United States. Before that, in 2008 we suggested a treaty between our country and the North Atlantic alliance. That was rejected like the 2021 document. They explained that nobody could dictate to Ukraine or NATO what countries can join the bloc. They took only one part of the consensus formula and ignored everything that determined it or was inconvenient. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg talked about this many times. This is his nature.
All this was ignored. A number of articles published by journalists that saw these events, including the German and French press, have cited OSCE statistics: since February of this year, the VSU (Armed Forces of Ukraine) intensified the shelling of Donbass 10 times. The hits and damage to civilian infrastructure increased by the same amount as well.
A few words about the OSCE’s objectivity. Since the start of the Minsk agreements, we asked the OSCE to present reports on what was happening at the contact line not in a general manner (like heavy weapons were used so many times and in the civilian sector) but in a specific way – who used heavy weapons and where and what the result was. We demanded reports for a year and a half. Then Foreign Minister of Ukraine, Pavel Klimkin, asked the OSCE publicly “not to follow in the wake of Russia” and not to present statistics like this.
We finally achieved what we wanted. In September 2019, we received information with a detailed breakdown (Ukraine wanted to keep it away from the public). It followed from the report that the damage to civilian infrastructure on the side controlled by Donetsk and Lugansk was five times greater than on Kiev-controlled territory. The number of civilian victims in the self-declared republics was also five times higher than on the VSU side. The statistics we received in February are available to the public. It shows that the use of heavy weapons had increased sharply – shelling increased by ten times, and a group of 120,000 armed people was formed to take Donbass by force. Nobody had any doubt that they had embarked on that road.
In November 2021 (when they started to prepare to take Donbass by force), President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky was asked in an interview with the Western media about his attitude towards the people in Donbass. He replied that some were people and others were “species.” He said if some Ukrainian residents felt they were Russian by culture and education, he would advise them to go to Russia for the sake of their future and a calm life for their children and grandchildren.
Not long ago he was asked in another interview what to do next and how to ensure security. He replied: If we allow Russia to win, this will become an awful precedent, and any more or less big country would be tempted to suppress, to seize smaller states. This would be a disaster for humanity. He said he wants every person, no matter where he was born and lived, to feel free and enjoy the same rights in any part of the world as he does in his own country. This statement was made by a man who advised anyone who feels Russian to get out of Ukraine. This is whom we are dealing with.
In December 2021, we proposed signing Russia-US and Russia-NATO treaties that contained security guarantees for Ukraine, Russia, and all European countries. The underlying principle was that these guarantees were provided without expanding military-political blocs, whether it’s NATO, the CSTO or whatever bloc they come up with later. This is what we did.
When the special military operation began, Ukraine suggested holding talks. We agreed. Three rounds of talks were held in Belarus with Ukraine doing little to advance them. While these talks were on, they killed a member of the negotiating team in Kiev. Nobody cares about that. President Putin asked German Chancellor Scholz in a telephone conversation if he knew about this. Scholz said that he had different information that he received from his own sources. The whole world knew that he had been killed. Ukraine did not hide it. At first they said he was killed in a drunken brawl, and then for high treason.
Then there was a series of online talks. On March 25, in Istanbul, for the first time, the Ukrainians put a piece of paper with the settlement principles on the table as opposed to making ambiguous verbal statements, as they usually did. We agreed to these principles. Clearly, someone did not like it. The Americans are now saying that Ukraine had not attenuated Russia enough yet, which was even less so in March. Kiev was told not to sign any agreement with Moscow. However, we were ready to sign a treaty based on the principles proposed by Ukraine.
A day later there was a provocation in Bucha which remains one of the questions that the West cannot shed light on for us. These other questions include information about Alexander Litvinenko’s death, the Skripals, Alexey Navalny, the Malaysia Airlines crash (where are the US satellite images?) and Nord Stream.
In September, at a meeting of the UN Security Council, I formally and publicly asked UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to have those who have it under their control to provide the lists of persons whose bodies were found in Bucha. Is it okay that they did not provide the lists of persons that were used to impose another volley of sanctions on us? They showed Bucha without any investigation, even without any of their “highly likely” nonsense. The EU said: well, lots of people have been killed, more sanctions should be imposed. We still can’t get the names. What is there to agree on?
Security guarantees were included in the Ukrainian project that we were ready to support. But they were outright told not to do it. President Macron says that when it is over, we will need to discuss European security, including guarantees for Russia’s security. The operative phrase is “when it is over.” How is “it” supposed to end according to Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz, Josep Borrell and other European leaders? “By defeating Russia on the battlefield,” only after defeating Russia “with arms in hand” can Ukraine start talks. They are told what to do.
The public space is split in half. From time to time, President Macron encourages the sides to start some kind of talks. When asked why, he says not now, but “later.” A man with a revealing last name James Cleverly who is British Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs makes ambiguous statements. It is hard to see sane behavior in the West, except for one thing: they still embrace the hope of defeating Russia “on the battlefield.” Some say this without mincing the words, others choose their words.
All these years we have had no shortage of goodwill, including December 2021 and March 2022. If there are any serious proposals on how to stop the conflict while complying with our legitimate demands, we will be ready to talk.
To be continued…
INTERNATIONALIST 360° 