Lavrov: Russia ready for partnerships based on mutual respect

To hear the Western media talk, the Russian Federation has become the most powerful and influential nation on Earth. Russia can influence elections in faraway lands, and change the minds of people through Facebook ads, as long as the catering is done by a good Russian company, of course.

But wait, that’s probably not what the Western media wants to say. They want to tell us that Russia is a problem because it has the amazing ability to do all these things.

It must be that catering company. Something they put in the food makes the people who eat it into super mind-control agents.

Well, thankfully, that is about as ridiculous as it has gotten, and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov once again tried to set matters straight.

At the Munich Security Conference on February 17, the Foreign Minister discussed many of these kinds of problems, the discomfort in the West, and the discomfort about the increasingly abnormal relations between Russia and the European Union. There is a split in opinions among the 27 member nations, as some of them believe the Western line totally, and others disagree, based more on experience in dealing with Russia than on the rhetoric spearheaded by a certain non-European power three thousand miles west of Spain.

Russia has been made the scapegoat for most of the West’s problems for years now. In November, for example, British PM Theresa May accused Russia of threatening the international order of the world. However, this does nothing to counter the rise in knife-related attacks and stabbings in London and the UK at large. The American Democrat Party, and not a few Republicans, blame Russia for the successful election of Donald Trump, a man who doesn’t play by DC rules, to the presidency.

Sergey Lavrov addressed these matters, as Sputnik News reports:

Commenting on the Moscow-Brussels ties, Lavrov said that the European Union has failed to find a golden mean in relations with Russia in the last decades, treating the country in 1990s as an “aprentice” that should be taught in accordance with western standards and values. Now, the other irrational myth about the so-called “Russian threat” is being exploited, Lavrov went on to note, with the western states accusing Moscow of meddling in every controversial event, including Brexit and the Catalan referendum on independence. 

Mr. Lavrov went further, though, to state that:

Russia is open to an equal, mutually respectful partnership that will be based on the balance of interests with the EU in order to find effective solutions to the challenges of a present day. We are ready to build relations with the US and other countries basing on the same principles…

He also expressed hope that the EU remains unified and continues to serve the basic interests of each of its member states.  He noted especially that he hoped that the EU countries would be autonomous in international affairs. He made a point that he believed that the EU member states should define for themselves how to develop their own economies and to satisfy their resource requirements, most particularly that of energy, a veiled reference to the pressure exerted on some EU nations by the Americans to buy American energy rather than the more easily available and cheaper Russian energy resources.

He went on to the discussion of Middle Eastern policy:

We believe that his idea of cooperation between the European Union, Russia, the United States and China to support the creation of the security architecture in the Middle East is very appreciated, and the same is true for the Gulf…

Russia has been honest, but always rather tactful, pointing out that the Middle Eastern troubles especially dating from 2011 were caused or exacerbated by the foreign policy whims of the United States. Russia’s collegial approach to solving these matters stands in contrast to the single-minded determination of the USA to exert its will in Middle Eastern affairs, as in much of the rest of the world.