Sergey Lavrov: “The United States has attacked us using the Ukrainian regime as a proxy”

Photo: MFA

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's remarks and answers to media questions following the meeting of the OSCE Council of Foreign Ministers, Valletta, December 5, 2024.

The OSCE Foreign Ministerial Council is convening in Malta. This is not the inaugural year that the Organisation has found itself in a profound crisis. Established on the tenets of equality, it was designed to consider mutual interests and seek a balance among them.

The cornerstone of the OSCE is consensus which forms the foundation of all its endeavours. This principle was compromised many years ago. Consequently, for more than one year, foreign ministers have not adopted any documents, diverging from the historical practice where consensus was upheld and never challenged.

We fail to comprehend the objectives pursued by the West in perpetuating aggressive rhetoric towards Russia annually. They attribute all the problems afflicting Europe to us, while disregarding the evidence that indicates it is the West that breaches all the accords established since the cessation of the Cold War. Since the OSCE's inception, the West appears unwilling to acknowledge the principles I have cited. In reality, it employs the Organisation, including its Chairpersonship and Secretariat, to advance its self-serving agenda and to "punish" (as it perceives) undesirable nations.

Today, we have candidly discussed this situation and underscored one crucial aspect. Irrespective of whether the West desires it or not, the process of constructing new security architecture is underway. This architecture is no longer anchored in the Euro-Atlantic vision but rather in the understanding that the unified Eurasian continent is now facilitating opportunities for all to equitably ensure the interests of everyone and to construct the very indivisible security that was proclaimed within the OSCE. Yet, this has been dismantled by the actions of the West in recklessly expanding NATO eastwards. There were explicit plans (which we are aware of) to incorporate Ukraine into NATO's "embrace", thereby posing direct threats to security on our borders.

The Eurasian concept is predicated on the natural, geographical, economic, and infrastructural opportunities accessible to all nations of the Eurasian continent. It is the largest, most populous, and fastest-growing landmass. It is home to countries representing great civilisations such as the Chinese, Indian, and Persian. We aspire to amalgamate all these opportunities of our continent to promote a common agenda that will be agreeable to all.

The Second International Conference on Eurasian Security was convened in Minsk at the end of October this year. Consequently, together with our Belarusian counterparts, we advocated the development of a Eurasian Charter of Diversity and Multipolarity in the 21st Century. We disseminated its elements among the countries that are members of the SCO, EAEU, CSTO, and CIS. We have also shared it with ASEAN members. We shall persist in advancing this concept through dialogue with all other nations, including European countries that express interest in joining this discourse.

The conference in Minsk was graced by the presence of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary Péter Szijjártó. Slovakia has also shown interest. I am confident that other countries will recognise the direct benefits of this initiative in terms of advancing their long-term interests and addressing the needs of their populations.

In Malta, alongside our CIS colleagues, we issued three joint statements: On the importance of preserving war memorials commemorating the events of the Second World War, On intensifying efforts to combat intolerance and discrimination against Christians, Muslims, and adherents of other religions, and On countering radicalisation leading to terrorism and extremism.

Such are our evaluations. Naturally, we will need to further examine the questions raised during the discussion. Our Western counterparts, almost unanimously, adopt a purely biased stance and pursue a path of confrontation instead of cooperation and ensuring security, as the very name of the OSCE necessitates.

Question: Is there any chance to make international institutions created after World War II more effective? If not, is it possible to set up new ones? What particular principles should underlie their functioning?

Sergey Lavrov: As a matter of fact, everything humanity needs to prosper and to sustainably develop is laid down in the Charter of the United Nations. The West tends to yank a particular principle from the Charter to suit its immediate interests and never respects the Charter in its entirety.

We have cited this example before. In 2008, they unilaterally declared Kosovo’s independence, saying that the Charter principle has it that everyone must respect the right of nations to self-determination. A few years later, when, in response to the illegal coup and the aggression on the part of the putschists who came to power in Kiev, the residents of Crimea declared their independence and joined Russia, Westerners immediately said that this violated the principle of territorial integrity. The examples abound.

The foundational principle of the Charter states that the United Nations is based on the sovereign equality of states. Never, not in any conflict, not in any situation that has developed around the world after World War II and after the UN had been created, has the West respected the principle of sovereign equality of states.

It acts roughly along the same lines in the OSCE. The United States has brought to heel not only NATO, but the European Union, which is in the process of becoming an appendage of NATO and is providing its capabilities for the military planning by the North Atlantic Alliance directed against the Russian Federation.

The UN itself is hit hard in many ways by this policy of domination. To a large extent, the West has privatised the UN Secretariat. Citizens of NATO countries man all the key positions that define the organisation’s areas of focus and activities. No one is benefitting from this. The World Majority countries have teamed up with us to advance a fair reform of the UN, which should address the under-representation of Asian, African and Latin American countries in the Security Council, and deal with over-representation of the West in the Secretariat and other bodies. We have proposed a number of criteria which we can use to carry out such a reform. This is a challenging issue which needs our time and effort to be properly addressed. But we will stay the course.

Question: In 2025, the OSCE Chairpersonship will be taken over by Finland. Does Russia have any objections to that, given Helsinki’s recent policies? Has there been any discussion here about who will hold the chairpersonship in 2026?

Sergey Lavrov: When the decision was made about who would hold the chairpersonship in 2025, we supported Finland’s nomination. Finland was not yet a NATO member, and upheld its neutrality which it took pride in, and planned to hold an honourable celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act. Since then, it has become a member of the Alliance, but we don’t believe we should make any fuss about it.

I don’t think the future of the OSCE depends on who is at the helm. The West is doing everything it can to undercut the very raison d’être of this organisation. We will oppose this. However, the Westerners have been overly aggressive in dealing with these matters and have been pursuing this policy for many years now, essentially destroying the OSCE. We will need to see what we can do with it going forward.

Question: In the run-up to today’s meeting, the Russian Foreign Ministry accused the OSCE of putting a Ukrainian slant on its agenda which paralyses all three dimensions of security: political and military, economic and environmental, and humanitarian. Do you think there is at least one Western international organisation out there whose agenda is not overly focused on Ukraine?

Sergey Lavrov: If we are talking about Western organisations, of course, there are none. There is no such organisation where the West does not promote the Ukraine issue aggressively and unscrupulously, twisting the facts and resorting to outright lies, whitewashing the crimes perpetrated by Zelensky’s racist regime, and blaming the Russian Federation for everything that is happening, while completely ignoring our arguments about the importance of looking into the deep-running root causes of what led to the current situation in Ukraine, which we have been clearly communicating to the entire international community for many years now.

These reasons are as follows. Direct military threats to the Russian Federation have been created in Ukraine by the attempts to draw it into NATO. They planned to deploy their military bases off the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. The second root cause includes the policy of the regime, which came to power on the heels of a coup in 2014, to annihilate everything Russian, including education, media, and culture. They got this policy underway long before the special military operation began. Laws to that effect have been passed since 2017, and eventually led to a crisis. The West, which never misses a chance to talk about human rights, went deathly silent in the case of Ukraine and turned a blind eye to outright annihilation of the rights of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers, including not only the language in all spheres, but also in connection with the recently adopted law banning the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Ignoring these root causes will do no good to anyone. We will uphold our position, since we are on the right side of this situation.

All initiatives put forward in good faith by our partners from different continents, which are aimed at identifying a political solution, must take into account the importance of ensuring the security interests of each country and respecting human rights regardless of race, gender, language or religion, which is explicitly laid out in the UN Charter.

All of this has been brazenly trampled upon by the Kiev regime. We have no hope for Western organisations. That is why we are not talking about Euro-Atlantic entities, including the OSCE, but about the importance of building a process for strengthening security in the Eurasian context on our entire continent.

Question: EU politicians are increasingly often discussing the idea of moving their troops into Ukraine. Does this scenario sit well with Russia?

Sergey Lavrov: Your question comes with an answer. I believe these fantasies only make the situation worse and show that the political figures who are promoting such ideas are insistently reluctant to hear clearly articulated public warnings that President Putin has issued on many occasions.

Question: Are any in-person Astana format meetings at the ministerial level planned to be held to discuss the situation in Aleppo?

Sergey Lavrov: Yes, we are discussing plans to call a ministerial meeting this week with our Turkish and Iranian partners.

Question: Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated that Armenia’s return to the CSTO is becoming increasingly difficult, if not impossible, stressing that the relations are beyond the point of no return. Did the CSTO receive any documents concerning Armenia’s withdrawal from the organisation?

Sergey Lavrov: No, it didn’t. We hear words to that effect. Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan discussed this subject extensively in the parliament. We don’t impose anything on anyone. We are convinced that using the CSTO membership to the hilt is in the best interests of Armenia’s security. If a decision, which he speaks of as a foregone conclusion, is effectively made, it will then be the sovereign right of the current Armenian leadership to do so. Russia, or other CSTO members for that matter, have not taken and are not going to take any action that could be construed as closing the door to Yerevan.

Question: You mentioned the 1989 Malta Summit today which, in fact, epitomised the end of the Cold War in Europe and beyond. Back then, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Mikhail Gorbachev told US President George H.W. Bush that the Soviet Union would never attack the United States. Thirty-five years later, we are facing a wall, or to use a more accurate term, a front line between our countries. Are we still committed to the idea that Russia will never attack the United States?

Sergey Lavrov: We do not want to attack anyone at all. The United States has attacked us using the Ukrainian regime as a proxy. It is waging a war against us using Ukrainian neo-Nazis, arming them, and helping them shell our territory with long-range weapons, as they directly participate in preparing such attacks. This is not something we chose.

President Putin has repeatedly made it clear that we had been left with no other choice but to start the special military operation. The Westerners have long been working on it as they turned Ukraine into a staging ground for creating threats to the Russian Federation.

We remain committed to it. The only problem we have in our relations with the United States is that they don’t keep their end of the bargain, they are unable to honour agreements that we arrive at. Starting with those bright and promising agreements that Mikhail Gorbachev and George H.W. Bush reached in Malta, and across all other areas, including the OSCE.

They promised not to move NATO eastward, but did exactly the opposite. They signed the documents at the OSCE summits to the effect that not a single organisation in this space would claim dominance. The Alliance has been doing exactly the opposite all these years.

The examples abound, including with regard to the Ukraine crisis. In 2014, an agreement was reached, and the next morning a coup broke out. The West swallowed and even encouraged it. It went along the same lines with the Minsk agreements approved by the UN Security Council. The West praised them all it could, but in reality did nothing to stop the Kiev regime from grossly violating them. In April 2022, in Istanbul, when the special military operation was already underway, an agreement was reached to end the armed conflict. The West told the Ukrainians not to make it a legally binding agreement.

President Putin said we would never again find ourselves in a situation that existed before early 2022, meaning precisely that all the previous years after the end of the Cold War, the West agreed on certain things and extolled them, but in fact it flagrantly violated all agreements and did everything to suppress the legitimate interests of the Russian Federation, or any other competitor for that matter.

We have learned our lessons and will never slam the door shut to relations with whoever it may be, but we will take a hard look at the kind of ideas those who have declared war on us using the Kiev regime as a proxy, who have imposed sweeping sanctions on us, and who accuse us of all mortal sins, will bring to the table. If and when they come to their senses and come up with specific ideas based on respect for each other’s interests, we will see and draw our conclusions based on what such possible proposals are actually all about.

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