Sergey Lavrov: “Washington’s position on Ukraine and Europe will not change in that the United States will always try to control everything in the region around NATO and NATO itself. The EU has become a kind of NATO in the military-political sense”

Photo: MFA

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with Marina Kim for the New World project, Moscow, November 14, 2024.

Question: Mr Lavrov, thank you for accepting our proposal to speak for the New World project. We are working online to tell people about the contours of the new world we are living in. Our programme is designed for young people. We tell them about the structure of the new world and the rules and standards it will be based on.

Sergey Lavrov: Do you know all that?

Question: No, but we discuss it with experts and decision-makers. We have analysed our audience’s views on who their heroes are, who they would listen to, and who makes decisions. The number one on that list is President Vladimir Putin, followed by Sergey Lavrov.

Over the past few decades, our diplomacy has been at its finest and enjoyed prestige worldwide, thanks to your team and you personally as its leader.

Do you, as minister and MGIMO graduate, regard the current developments as predictable or surprising?

Sergey Lavrov: Expectations are not part of the diplomatic profession. They are the domain of political analysts. When the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, Francis Fukuyama declared the “end of history.” He said that he did not expect but was confident that liberal democracy would rule the world in all countries ever after. So, it is for political analysts to fantasise and entertain expectations, while we must be guided by hard facts. However, we must do our best to strengthen our global standing if we want these facts to be acceptable to us. This is exactly what we are doing when we assert our right to protect our security, our allies, the people who are part of the Russian World and our compatriots.

We are doing this in Ukraine now. You can see the West’s reaction. I have no expectations whatsoever, and I will not try to express or even formulate them. We are doing practical work, namely, ensuring Russia’s foreign policy interests at a time when our men and women are fighting in the special military operation.

Our main task now is to achieve all the goals formulated by President Vladimir Putin. You are aware of the West’s expectations. They are speculating about stopping the hostilities at a certain line and coordinating a truce, so that 10 years from now they will decide who Crimea and Donbass belong to. This is coffee cup reading. I won’t engage in it. We have our tasks, and we will fulfil them.

Question: We sometimes go to the frontline. We have a crew there filming our stories. People there are closely monitoring international relations and your statements. They have a great deal of respect for you. Our men and women there would like to see the image of victory which they are fighting for. Do you have this image as an individual and minister? What is the image of victory for Russia now?

Sergey Lavrov: Everyone in Russia has the same understanding of victory. It is victory as the ultimate outcome, and the brightest example is May 9, 1945.

I have no doubt whatsoever that our heroes, who are on the offensive now to push the enemy out of our historical territories, draw inspiration above all from the heroism of their fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers.

Question: We are trying to build, understand and gauge the contours, the outlines of the present-day world order. What could it represent in the next ten, 20 or 25 years? What will the political landscape look like?

Sergey Lavrov: This question is not for me. Our job is to assert and promote Russia’s interests in keeping with its Constitution as well as the objectives defined by President Vladimir Putin. This goes beyond Ukraine and applies to Russia’s Foreign Policy Concept in general. Promoting the concept of a Greater Eurasian Partnership is part of an effort to enable all structures and countries across Eurasia to work more closely together, exchange their integration practices, harmonise and coordinate their projects, and engage in major infrastructure undertakings such as the well-known North-South International Transport Corridor. This also includes linking Indian ports with the ports in Russia’s Far East, and the Northern Sea Route too.

God gave us one continent, and we share it. This continent possesses immense and, in fact, the biggest natural resources, while several millennia-old civilisations inhabit it. Failing to benefit from these competitive advantages would be a mistake. This is what the idea of building a Greater Eurasian Partnership is all about, and the EAEU, SCO and ASEAN have already taken the first steps in this direction. We are establishing ties and promoting dialogue. If we succeed in fulfilling the plans we have, the Greater Eurasian Partnership will offer a solid foundation and serve as an economic and transport backbone for what President Vladimir Putin called a new Eurasian security architecture.

This is what we are interested in. Moreover, there is a clear understanding that this architecture, just like the Greater Eurasian Partnership, must be open to all countries and continents, including Eurasia’s western part, even if so far the latter has been trying, as if by inertia, to ensure its interests within a Euro-Atlantic security concept instead of opting for the Eurasian framework, which would be natural and reasonable, considering the geography factor. This is their way of saying that they do not intend to do anything without the United States.

That said, these Euro-Atlantic notes are gradually fading and no longer surface in policy statements or speeches by certain European leaders, primarily in Hungary and Slovakia. There are several other political leaders opposing Europe’s mainstream neo-liberal policy. They have already realised that they must become more self-reliant and focus on working with those who are near them.

We can see through what the Americans want. Sitting somewhere overseas, they believe that they are beyond the reach, while leaving it to Europe to overcome the challenges they face in terms of encouraging and arming Ukraine to fight Russia, as well as footing the bill for the Middle East tragedy.

There is an effort to get Europe involved in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. Germany, France and, of course, the UK, take part in naval exercises there and create exclusive, bloc-based frameworks with all these trilaterals, quadrilaterals, AUKUSs and QUADs. And they are doing all this for the sake of containing China – this is their stated goal.

In fact, our Western colleagues have their own vision for Eurasian security, which comes down to enabling the United States to have the upper hand everywhere. To counter this selfish and aggressive approach, we propose a concept that allows all countries across the continent to combine their efforts and devise new principles taking into account that we already have structures specialising in military and political matters. These include the SCO and the CSTO. ASEAN also has a military and political dimension.

We are seeking to promote closer ties between these structures while leaving the door open to everyone who is willing to abide by international law and its core principle of sovereign equality of states, rather than relying on some sort of rules. In fact, no one has seen these rules, but the West keeps promoting them as a prerequisite for forging closer ties. This is our objective.

We have quite a few partners, and their number has been growing beyond Eurasia. This is where our action within BRICS comes into play. But this is a separate topic.

Question: BRICS has again become a popular issue online. Young people are looking at it, trying to understand what it is and how it will develop. It is even said that “everything will be BRICS,” meaning that everything will be good. It is an image of the new world order. You have mentioned certain structures that can ensure Eurasian security. Can such a structure be created within BRICS, or is BRICS not about security but mostly about the economy?

Sergey Lavrov: BRICS is about the new world order that is based on the main principle of the UN Charter – the sovereign equality of states. The group was formed naturally when the most rapidly rising economies recognised the expediency of coming together to see if they can use their economic achievements to work more effectively on the global scale by employing their contacts and influence.

Unlike the G7 and other institutions controlled by the West, such as the Bretton Woods institutions and the WTO, BRICS has seen that everything the Americans control now was created many years ago and promoted as the global good, namely their concepts of globalisation, the inviolability of property, fair competition, the presumption of innocence and so on – all those principles collapsed overnight when they decided to “punish” Russia.

Incidentally, sanctions have been imposed on over half of the world’s countries, even if they are not as drastic as those that have been adopted against Russia, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Iran and Venezuela. The real reason behind the West’s current rage is that China is rapidly and confidently surging ahead of the United States. Moreover, it is doing this on the basis of the norms the Americans have used to create such institutions as the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. Moreover, China is moving ahead despite America’s abuse of these institutions and mechanisms.

The task of containing China was articulated by the Biden administration. I believe that it will remain a priority for the Trump administration too. We are a current threat to them. Washington can’t allow Russia to prove that it is a strong player and undermine the West’s reputation. They don’t care about Ukraine. They only care about their reputation. They decided that Ukraine should have a government they like and didn’t expect anyone to protest. Russia? It’s a big country but it must be brought down a peg. That is what this is about rather than the future of the Ukrainian people. They don’t care about people.

When he saw that the West didn’t care about the people, Vladimir Zelensky presented a “victory plan” offering the West to take over Ukraine’s natural resources, while Ukraine would provide the police and military to ensure law and order in Europe because the Americans were sick and tired of that chore. It is proposed that a number of Americans would remain in Europe, with Gauleiters and overseers doing the dirty jobs, like they did during the Great Patriotic War and WWII, putting down protests and suppressing those who abandon the Brussels (that is, neo-liberal and dictatorial) dogmas and uphold their national interests. It is a comprehensive process.

BRICS is associated with Eurasia, of course, because it includes China, India, Russia and Pakistan. This is obvious.

The SCO is operating on the Eurasian continent, including in terms of its development and the plans it makes and implements in the economy and the military-political sphere. It conducts anti-terrorist exercises. There are close ties between their law enforcement agencies at the level of the member states’ security councils. The humanitarian aspect includes the exchange of best practices in education, cultural programmes and sports events. It is a regional process which we are stimulating and encouraging. We are watching with sympathy and are ready to help promote integration within the African Union and CELAC.

These associations have become more active recently. They are increasingly aware of the unreliability of global economic mechanisms and the system of relations which the world has accepted at the West’s prompting. The Western countries are now using these associations to their own advantage. Nobody wants to become their new victim. Nobody knows on which side someone in Washington will get out of bed, who they will dislike, and who they will use the language of dictate against tomorrow.

The countries of the Global South and East, the Global Majority don’t demand that the existing institutions, like the World Bank or the WTO, be dissolved, but they call for a just reform. Meanwhile, they are creating parallel mechanisms of settlement and insurance, as well as logistic chains, to avoid dependence on them.

During the latest BRICS Summit in Kazan, we proposed creating a BRICS grain exchange, which received a positive response from all parties. We are doing this to be able to trade calmly and normally, using various routes and bank connections protected from dictate and possible damage by those who control the classical institutions of the global economy.

I have mentioned regional integration associations which maintain contacts with each other, such as the SCO, the EAEU and ASEAN in Eurasia, the African Union in Africa and CELAC in Latin America. At the global level, BRICS is regarded as a flexible and non-bureaucratic structure that could harmonise these regional processes. The leading countries of the SCO, ASEAN, the African Union and Latin America, as well as the Arab world, which is important, are involved in BRICS in one way or another, including as traditional cooperation partners in the BRICS Plus/Outreach format.

We have created a category of partner countries. Over 30 countries are interested in developing closer ties with BRICS. This is a significant trend that allows us to discuss ways to harmonise the activities of the Global Majority in the economy, politics, finance and the humanitarian sphere at this level during the group’s summits.

Question: Would it be fair to say that in today’s world BRICS operates as an integration platform which is ready to bring together the organisations you have just mentioned? Are we talking about some kind of institutionalised framework? Will BRICS have its own headquarters? Will it be located in a neutral country? Or is this not on the agenda so far?

Sergey Lavrov: BRICS is not a platform. It represents a natural grouping, with regional and integration platforms viewing it as an ally and a way to harmonise and coordinate their plans at a global level.

There have been no discussions of transforming BRICS into a formal bureaucratic institution. Its agility is what makes it so appealing. The chairmanship rotates annually in alphabetical order, and the country assuming the chairmanship performs the functions that secretariats normally have, holds various events, etc. And everyone is satisfied with this approach. I am certain that this is the best option and will remain the best option for quite some time.

Question: The BRICS Summit in Kazan was a truly historic event. Almost 30 heads of state attended it. Can it be compared to any other historical events, such as Tehran or Vienna, in terms of its scale? President Vladimir Putin mentioned the Westphalian system of international relations, and the Yalta system too. But this summit marked a new stage. How would you call it?

Sergey Lavrov: Call it the BRICS Stage. But all the examples you have just mentioned had a different purpose. Those meetings were essentially about carving up the world, as we say. Every country wanted to have a bigger say in the emerging systems, including the one resulting from the Yalta Conference. The Soviet Union succeeded in its efforts, but that amounted to splitting and carving up the world.

However, BRICS has no intention of dividing the world. It wants to bring together countries that desire closer relations so that they can live on the land they got from God and their ancestors just as they used to, as great civilisations. This includes China, India, Iran, Russia and many other countries. They do not want anyone telling them how they must trade, or preventing them from processing their natural resources, which is the case in Africa.

Only recently, we held a meeting in Sochi. It was the First Ministerial Conference of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum. Most of the participants said that they can no longer tolerate a situation where they cannot extract on their own everything nature has given them – the rich reserves, including rare earth minerals, uranium and many other resources – without the assistance from Western companies. But these Western companies take all these commodities to their processing plants and keep all the added value. This is neo-colonialism at its finest.

United Russia has been proactively working on this agenda with like-minded parties across the Global South. In February 2024, it convened the founding congress of the For the Freedom of Nations! interparty movement. Its goal is to fight neo-colonial practices in their present-day iterations. In June 2024, United Russia held an interparty event in Vladivostok on the same topic. There is already a special permanent platform for working on this agenda, called For the Freedom of Nations! Many African parties and other structures have joined it. Africans want to take ownership of their riches and their destiny. This is what matters to them.

In 2023, I had the privilege of representing President Vladimir Putin at the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg. Getting fuel for the plane for our trip back home was quite a challenge, by the way. It turned out that almost all companies offering aviation fuel It was impossible for us to get fuel for the plane. This was quite irritating, of course.

When the United States imposes sanctions of this kind, what they fail to understand is that they have an intimidating effect on others trying to avoid what they call secondary sanctions. It is inevitable for reasonable people to take offence when someone tramples upon their sovereignty. Donald Trump had the intuition to raise this issue when he said that weaponising the dollar was the biggest mistake of the Joe Biden administration, since this policy encouraged many to stop using the dollar.

There was a time when BRICS countries traded almost exclusively in dollars, but now this currency accounts for less than 30 percent. This is quite a serious result.

Question: Can Russia assume leadership and head a movement to liberate all states still experiencing the vestiges of colonialism? Is it perhaps time to adopt a declaration against modern forms of colonialism? Can BRICS undertake this effort? Is it not time to make it clear to the modern world that colonialism is history?

Sergey Lavrov: Firstly, colonialism is not “history,” not yet. Unfortunately, not all the colonial possessions of Western countries have been liberated yet. As far back as 1960, the UN General Assembly demanded that they be liberated. However, France, Britain and a number of other Western states violated its resolutions and refused to liberate the territories they seized through colonial wars.

There is no need to create a new movement or association today. I have just mentioned that the United Russia party initiated a movement, For the Freedom of Nations, precisely to fight the modern practices of neo-colonialism, as stated in its charter.

Colonialism is still seeing occasional relapses in small island states, above all in and around Africa. Decolonisation has taken place as a global process. However, when Africa gained independence, it became clear that they had little more than political independence. A simple example – they could not refuel their guest’s plane.

At the Russia-Africa summit in 2023, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni spoke about the global coffee market. Most coffee is grown and harvested in Africa. The global coffee market is valued at about $450 billion, but Africa retains only 20 percent of that. President Museveni said that Germany alone generated more revenue from the coffee industry through processing, roasting, packaging, and marketing the end product than the whole continent of Africa. Seemingly free countries have their economies largely owned by the former parent states. When Zimbabwe decided to nationalise land from white farmers a few decades ago, it was punished with harsh sanctions.

Decolonisation has taken place, in a broad sense. But being able to actually manage one’s freedom and resources is a different story. This is where neo-colonialism comes to the fore.

The First Ministerial Conference of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum in Sochi, and the Russia-Africa summit in St Petersburg in 2023 clearly put into perspective the trends that could be called Africa’s second awakening. Having thrown off the chains of colonialism (the crude subjugation of nations by Western countries), they realised that they still had to throw off the chains of economic dependence. This process will continue to unfold.

Unlike Western countries, Russia is investing in Africa in such a way as to stimulate the production of goods that Africans need. For example, we export fertilisers to African nations. A number of African countries have the resources to produce them locally, so we are helping them with that. There are many such examples of localising what they need and what we have. It is a different philosophy. It does not really matter if we raise a banner saying “Down with neo-colonialism” or just continue doing what we are doing. There is no stopping the movement in that direction.

Question: You have said that Trump’s accession to power will not change the US policy in Ukraine. Do you still think so, or should we take into account the new appointments in the Trump administration, some of them people who have been speaking about Ukraine fatigue and putting an end to funding? Donald Trump has even said that the United States might leave NATO. What do you think about the possibility of a settlement in Ukraine under the Trump administration?

Sergey Lavrov: Essentially, Washington’s position on Ukraine and Europe will not change in that the United States will always try to control everything in the region around NATO and NATO itself. The EU has become a kind of NATO in the military-political sense. I won’t try to guess how they would do this and how they would maintain control in the new conditions. Forms can vary. But I have no doubt whatsoever that they will try to control these processes.

Some people have taken a more reasonable view of the situation in Ukraine, saying that a great deal has been lost and this loss will never be recovered, and so a freeze would be a solution in this situation.

Question: Donald Trump has said that he will have it solved in 24 hours.

Sergey Lavrov: That’s not what I’m talking about. I don’t want to focus on that. Those who now claim that they have made a U-turn and want to stop the war are actually talking about operations on the line of contact and a 10-year truce, after which they would look at what could be done. But this is just another version of the Minsk Agreements, or even worse. The Minsk Agreements were the final solution, but they didn’t bother to accept them as such.

To tell the truth, these agreements concerned a small part of Donbass. But it has not come about because Zelensky, and Petr Poroshenko before him, were categorically against giving that part of Donbass, which would have remained Ukraine, a special status with a right to speak the native language. The West swallowed that, despite our numerous arguments about the root causes of the conflict, including the drawing of Ukraine into NATO and the deliberate legislative elimination of everything Russian.

This programme is too short to enumerate all the laws that prohibited Russian language education, media and cultural events, not to mention the ban on using Russian in everyday life. Nobody there takes this into account.

None of the Republicans who are voicing what is described as “revolutionary ideas” for ending the Ukraine conflict have said that people in Ukraine must regain their right to speak, receive education themselves and ensure the same for their children, as well as have access to information in the Russian language. We have said this on numerous occasions, and we will continue to do it. The Western architects of a settlement in Ukraine have no regard for that. In my opinion, this means (it is yet another fact proving that no US administration is different) that they feel good when Russia and its influence, as well as the Russian World are weakened, because everything they do is ultimately aimed at suppressing Russia as a competitor.

The Americans announced long ago that no state in the world must become more influential than the United States. That is the real reason. Their attitude to the Russian language, which is a vital human right, is very telling in this respect.

Question: Elon Musk has already got his appointment within the Donald Trump administration. Could this pave the way or lay the groundwork for a new kind of thinking?

Sergey Lavrov: We will refrain from making any guesses or trying to predict the future. Instead, we will judge them by what they do, not say.

Question: Legitimacy has become a major challenge for present-day Ukraine. The media have been reporting that an election could take place in May 2025. If we assume that Vladimir Zelensky is not elected, or if he is re-elected, will the election resolve the legitimacy issue? And will Russia be willing to strike a deal with the new government?

Sergey Lavrov: I do not know. There are various ways of holding an election. You can see how they did it in Moldova. We can conclude whether an election process was legitimate only in retrospect so that we can see how it was organised.

Question: Still, there would be no peace deal with the current Zelensky regime. Is that right?

Sergey Lavrov: President Vladimir Putin has said many times that we have never rejected talks. And it must be clear that it is not up to Vladimir Zelensky to decide. They are calling on us to launch talks, while also turning everything upside down by saying that it is Ukraine that wants talks, while Russia is rejecting them.

Vladimir Putin has said many times over that Vladimir Zelensky could at least withdraw the executive order he signed a couple of years ago which effectively prohibits talks with Vladimir Putin’s government. Let me stop here.

Question: During the Valdai International Discussion Club meeting, President Vladimir Putin offered a detailed and thorough account of the relations between the presidents of the Russian Federation and the United States. He mentioned George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. This created an impression in some quarters around the world that Russian and US administrations could well revive their contacts. Considering that Vladimir Putin has already met Donald Trump, could this pave the way to restoring these contacts?

Sergey Lavrov: What a strange thing to hear. During the Valdai International Discussion Club meeting, President Vladimir Putin said that he always stayed open for any communications. We were not the ones to stop communicating. The ball is in their court.

Question: Russia has accomplished a major shift by turning to the East, where powers like China and India are set to reinforce and consolidate their standing over the next ten to twenty years. Would it be fair to say that we are headed in the same direction with China and India, or that Russia could act as a go-between for these two emerging economies, considering that China and India may not see eye to eye on certain matters?

Sergey Lavrov: We are headed in the same direction, which consists of strengthening our national sovereignty, relying on our own resources and focusing on promoting development and making maximum use of equal and mutually beneficial contacts with our neighbours and partners. In this sense, Russia, India and China still form this quintessential triangle as conceived and established by Yevgeny Primakov in the late 1990s. This format has remained relevant to this day.

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