Lavrov: we will not close doors for European partners if they refuse to be subordinate to the US
Belarus and Russia will not close doors for their European partners if they refuse to be subordinate to Washington and start thinking about their national interests – as stated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, commenting on the results of his today’s meeting with the President of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko
Mr. Lavrov stated that Eurasia is the most promising region of the world today, since strategic transport and logistics communications pass – and can pass in the future – through it. “There are already a lot of them, but it is obviously necessary to create new transport corridors – North-South, East-West – in order to use all the advantages of this continent. All this makes joining efforts simply mandatory for all normal countries. If our Western colleagues who occupy about a quarter [of the territory] in the west of Eurasia, believe that it is not in their interests, but it is in their interests to give all their money for armament for the Kiev regime and bear enormous economic losses, to contribute to making the United States an absolute leader, and to lose the most from the war in Ukraine, which it unleashed – then there is nothing we can do here. However, this does not mean that everyone else should wait until their senses prevail,” he said.
The Russian Foreign Minister added that this is why the topic of Eurasian co-operation has been promoted for a long time, and in a variety of formats: CSTO, CIS, SCO, and ASEAN. Contacts have been established between all these structures, including in the form of signed memoranda at the level of executive secretaries.
“We proceed from the fact that we will not slam the door in front of our Western colleagues and neighbours on this continent when and if they decide to return to common sense, stop playing the ideologized confrontational schemes imposed on them by Americans and several other aggressive neighbours (including yours and ours), refuse subordination to Washington in everything and start feeling themselves like independent states, thinking about their own national interests,” Mr. Lavrov stressed.
At the same time, the diplomat noted that such communication will be determined by mutual benefits, and not solely by the wishes of European partners. According to him, the international Eurasian Security: Reality and Prospects in Transforming World conference – which opened in Minsk today – is timely. The event will give an impetus to the issues raised at it to be discussed in a substantive way between all organisations operating in our space, including the Union State, CSTO, CIS, SCO, and ASEAN.
“I see here a very useful process of exchange of experience between all these structures and co-ordination of projects that will ensure complementarity of all these organisations. This is a division of labour in the best sense of the word," Mr. Lavrov summed up.
