Standoff between Russia and West is ‘war of worlds’ – Lavrov

Washington and its allies will never allow any nation to pursue a sovereign policy based on national interests if it conflicts with their own plans, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday. The ongoing standoff between Russia and the Western nations is a “war of worlds” involving incompatible approaches to international politics, he added.

“Should any other nation try and defend its national interests just as staunchly and decisively, the West would turn against it as well,” the minister told the Great Game show aired on Russia’s Channel 1. The US and its allies still treat the “threat” posed by Russia to their plans as a “tactical” one but believe that Moscow’s victory would make this threat “unacceptable.”

Western nations claim to defend a supposed “rules-based order,” the Russian minister said, adding that such an order is nothing but a dictate by Washington and its allies. “It is when they [the West] decide on which globalization system applies to the world, what are its mechanisms… how trade disputes are resolved,” Lavrov said.

The top Russian diplomat also said Washington and its allies had easily exploited principles they had previously declared to be inviolable. “The West has trampled on all its principles in an instant… free trade, fair competition, presumption of innocence… were all turned into weapons when they [the West] needed to punish the Russian Federation,” he said.

“When it comes to our former Western partners, though, we cannot rely on any agreements with them, including those of a legally binding nature,” Lavrov maintained. The US and its allies have repeatedly bent the rules of the “order” they were supposedly defending and neglected their commitments under agreements struck with Moscow, the minister stated.

Washington and many Western nations recognized Kosovo’s independence without any referendums on the basis of a unilateral declaration by Pristina, Lavrov said, adding that the same countries dismissed the results of the referendum in Crimea, arguing that the principle of the territorial integrity of Ukraine supposedly takes precedence in this particular case.

In February 2014, when the Ukrainian opposition broke their obligations under a deal struck with then-president Viktor Yanukovich, none of the Western guarantors of the agreement “lifted a finger,” Lavrov said, adding that the list of guarantors included France, Germany and Poland at that time.

Now, the West is trying to pin all the blame on Russia, accusing it of “unprovoked aggression,” the minister said, describing this as nothing but an attempt to shift the responsibility from Washington and its allies.