Russia won’t sever ties with Europe, but no business as usual – Lavrov

Russia and the EU are having a moment of truth focused in Ukraine. Moscow won’t be the one to break ties with Europe, but won’t simply go back to how the things were before the crisis hit, said the Russian foreign minister.

“The EU is our largest partner. Nobody is going to shoot himself in the foot and reject cooperation with Europe, but everyone understands that there won’t be business as usual anymore,” Sergey Lavrov told a leading think-tank in Moscow.

 “But we don’t need the kind of business we had. The business was like ‘Russia must do this and must do that’, and we want to cooperate as equals,” he added.

‘Ideology blinds Europe’

The minister stressed that the tensions between Russia and the West had been brewing for years before the Ukrainian crisis. Now Europeans decided to go for all-or-nothing and play chicken with Russia. But at least the positions have been made clear, Lavrov said.

“Western leaders publicly state that the [anti-Russian] sanctions must hurt her economy and raise public protests. The West doesn’t want to change Russia’s policies. They want a regime change. Practically nobody denies that,” he said.

He laid the blame for the escalation on an “aggressive minority” among EU nations, who pursue ideologically-driven grabs of power in eastern Europe, including Ukraine, instead of focusing on the serious problems that Europe is facing due to the turmoil across the Mediterranean in North Africa and the Middle East.

“Exporting any kind of ideology, whether it is democratic or communist or any other kind, won’t do any good,” he warned.

Ideology blinds Europeans to some problems, which Russia believes need to be solved, Lavrov said.

 ‘Russia not anti-American’

“It’s not about anti-Americanism or forming some sort of anti-American coalition. It’s about the natural desire of an increasing number of nations to ensure their vital interests and doing it in a way they see right, not the way they are being told by a foreign party,” he said.

If the US pursues leadership not out of a false perception that it has a God-given burden to take responsibility for everybody, but by developing the skill to form a consensus, Moscow would be the first to back Washington, Lavrov said.

But now Washington is bullying other nations into toeing their line, and few dare to object publicly out of fear of reprisal, while complaining in private, he added.

RT

Maher Taki