Moscow, (ST) – Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed the importance of relations between his country and China, noting that Russia will not sacrifice its relations with Beijing to appease the United States.
RT quoted Lavrov as saying during a TV program yesterday that “former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had previously spoken to him during a recent meeting about his book devoted to China and indicated that the ideal situation for the United States is that its relations with Russia and China are better than relations between Russia and China. ”
“We will not weaken our relations with China just to make the Americans happy, but the idea that we need to achieve our goals through affirmative action and cooperation development, not through sanctions and warnings, may at least be appreciated,” Lavrov added.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stressed during a telephone conversation with Lavrov last Thursday that the mutual trust between Russia and China is as solid as the rock.
US sanctions will not affect our economic projects, says Moscow
In a another development, the Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed that the US sanctions against Russian gas pipelines will not affect Moscow’s plans to implement its economic projects and that Europe is the true loser of Washington’s punitive policies.
“Russia has implemented and continued to implement its economic projects regardless of any sanctions,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement posted on its website.
The statement pointed out that “Washington’s claim that it is keen to protect European energy security is misleading because it is not a matter of helping Europeans to provide energy supplies without interruption at reasonable prices, but rather seeking to deprive them of guaranteed sources of such supplies from Russia, slowing the development of Europe’s economy and undermining its ability to compete with the United States in international markets”.
Raghda Sawas