Russia’s updated foreign policy will be directed at ending the West’s dominance in global affairs, as it is “obsessed” with the unipolar world order, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday.
“In our updated foreign policy, we will talk about the need to end the West’s monopoly on the formation of international life,” Lavrov said at the State Duma, Russia’s lower chamber of parliament.
The minister stressed that “the international life henceforth should be determined … on a fair, universal basis of a balance of interests, as required by the UN Charter, which enshrines the principle of sovereign equality of all states.”
According to Lavrov, the West is “obsessed” with the unipolar world order and is impeding the formation of new global centers.
“And all this in the hope of continuing … to collect a tribute from humanity, to extract the rent of the hegemon,” he said.
Lavrov supported the parliamentary initiative to hold an international forum to fight modern models of neocolonialism, and he responded to France’s accusations of Russia’s neocolonial politics, calling the remarks a “clinical case” and an attempt to shift “from a sick head to a healthy one.”
“Paris, which, together with other European countries, has committed numerous bloody crimes on the continent and today considers Africa openly as its backyard, is making accusations against Moscow, which played a leading role in liberating the peoples of the continent from colonial oppression,” the minister alleged.
He claimed that the West is waging a hybrid war against Russia by using a wide range of tools, including sanctions, the war in Ukraine, and smear campaigns in the media, and trying to encircle Russia with a “sanitary cordon,” cutting it off from the rest of the world and turning it into “some kind of a rogue country,” with the ultimate goal of the country’s disintegration.
NATO’s expansion to Russia’s borders and use of Ukraine as a military foothold are an integral part of the anti-Russia course, which has “reached the point of no return,” he added.
Lavrov said after many instances of Western deception, Moscow has completely lost trust in relations with the West.
He said Russia is preparing a special meeting of the UN Security Council to find a possibility of an international investigation into the explosions on the Nord Stream gas pipelines.
He said Moscow does not believe in the West’s claims of non-involvement in the accident, and that Western politicians “are lying, hiding the truth about the terrorist attacks on the Nord Stream and Nord Stream-2 gas pipelines, just as they lied about the Minsk agreements,” which were signed not to settle the conflict in Ukraine peacefully, but to give Ukraine time to strengthen its military capabilities.
Lavrov said he sees attempts to undermine Russia’s cooperation with Moldova and to oust Russian peacekeepers from Transnistria – an unrecognized breakaway state that is internationally recognized as a part of Moldova.
Read More: Russia wants UN probe into Nord Stream blasts
He pointed out that many members of the current Moldovan government have Romanian citizenship, promote the idea of Moldova’s integration into Romania, and do not defend the interests of the Moldovan people.
The Foreign Ministry is currently revising its obligations to international organizations due to their biased and discriminatory attitude towards Russia, as well as violation of “rules and procedures on a daily basis, just … to adopt anti-Russian resolutions,” he noted.
According to Lavrov, while examining several hundred treaties and conventions for the necessity of further implementation, the Russian side also delays payments to organizations where its interests are “infringed.”
At the same time, the world is not limited by Western countries; diplomatic work in other directions is ongoing, the country’s top diplomat said.
Cooperation in Eurasia has been growing, with dozens of countries eyeing partnership relations with the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), including through the signing of free trade zone agreements, he added.
He asserted that the Islamic world has been a priority for Russian foreign policy for a long time, and cooperation is evolving, including through the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), to which Moscow has been an observer for about 10 years.
Russia is also discussing the formation of a multipolar world with China, in the very near future, a series of Russian-Chinese contacts will be held “at a high political level,” he said.
Lavrov believes that the process of forming a multipolar world will take a long time and that the current generation will most likely not see its completion.
“However, the process has started,” he said.
Lavrov on the occasion also announced that Russia plans to introduce a visa-free regime with 11 countries in the near future, as well as a visa-easing regime with six countries, including India and Indonesia.
Furthermore, the Foreign Ministry will publish a report by June 1 on the possibility of introducing electronic visas for citizens of 70 more countries, he said, pledging that “there will be no problems for friendly countries.”