Lavrov Says US Unilateral Actions in Syria Provoked Turkey to Fury

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has pointed to the United States’ “destructive role in foreign affairs” in an interview with Russia’s Kommersant newspaper.

“Many political scientists ask the question, why are we concerned [over US actions as regarding the Iranian nuclear deal], saying that ‘worse is better’: let the United States prove its inability to negotiate, its destructive role in foreign affairs, whether in Iran, or in Syria, where Washington is taking unilateral steps that have enraged Turkey,” Lavrov said, answering a question about the benefits Russia could gain as a result of US the policy to abort the deal with Tehran, according to Sputnik.

   The statement was made amid an enraged Turkey’s military operation in the Syrian city of Afrin, dubbed Olive Branch, which was launched on January 20 with airstrikes in the area, and moving on to ground operations, which began on January 21.

In his Sunday statement, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has blamed the United States for supporting the Kurdish militia in Syria., saying that the US has sent 5,000 trucks with weapons to the Syrian Kurds.

Russia-US Relations

Speaking about the recently tense relations between Moscow and Washington, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed that a set of “non-paper” proposals on cooperation that was given by Russia to the United States is still in place.

“The proposals are always in effect. We never ‘strike a pose,’ but try to understand the background of the activities carried out either by the US side, or by our other colleagues,” Lavrov said, answering a question if these proposals still remained in place.

The minister noted that in US-Russia relations, there were currently a number of issues stipulating the aggressive stance of the US establishment on Moscow.

The statement was made in spring 2017, when US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared after talks in Moscow that the Russian side had given the United States a set of proposals on cooperation.

As Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov specified, Moscow had given Washington the list of proposals in a “non-paper” format on issues such as cybersecurity and the struggle against intellectual property infringement.

Lavrov went on by saying that certain representatives of the US Congress admit that the current situation in Washington’s relations with Moscow is far from normality.

“We are encouraged by the situation that recently several members of the US Congress, the representatives of US political science, diplomacy have admitted off the record that the situation [between the United States and Russia] is abnormal and it should be corrected,” Lavrov said.

The diplomat added that, at the same time, those people understand the US actions towards Russia as excessive, proposing Moscow to make some steps to allow them to say that Russia had “eased up.” According to the minister, such mentality does not serve US interests either.

The top diplomat pointed to the growing military buildup across the world, comparing the situation with the Cold War-era.

In the absence of ideological differences, a buildup of military capacities is unfolding. We have not seen such developments since the cold war,” Lavrov said.

H.M