Sergey Lavrov: “We are going to insist on getting the truth from the West because, unless we do that, there will be no trust… They should recognise their responsibility for what they are saying”

Photo: MFA

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks and answers to media questions following his visit to the United States within the framework of Russia’s UN Security Council Presidency, New York, July 17, 2024:

Good afternoon, I am delighted to meet with you again.

I came to New York for two key events – open debates  – that were held yesterday and today within the framework of Russia’s UN Security Council Presidency. Not only members of the Security Council but all other delegations could attend them. You saw how many of them did so.

The first issue we proposed for discussion yesterday concerned the conceptual framework of international relations, multilateralism and multipolarity. We pointed out the gradual erosion of system that was created after the Second World War on the basis of the central role of the UN.

I hope that you listened to my statement and to the statements made by other participants. We did not expect to come to agreement on the majority of issues, considering the current tensions on the international stage and the state of relations between the collective West and the Global Majority.

Although we had no big illusions, I believe that it was a useful discussion. At the very least, the overwhelming majority of participants agreed that we have problems.  Many of them expressed opinions that coincide with our vision of the objective development of a multipolar world order, which I presented in my statement.

Another conclusion is that this discussion will most certainly be continued. There is an apparent interest for this, and it is growing. We will actively keep it up, and we will organise additional discussions on this issue not only at the UN but also at other multilateral platforms, including at the Group of Twenty, at associations such as BRICS and the SCO, as well as in the framework of our contacts with the regional organisations of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The restoration of trust is the top priority now, as the representative of Guyana pointed out yesterday. So far, there was no hint of dialogue. Another important statement he made was that trust could only be rebuilt if all parties without exception comply with the agreements reached. This is not the case so far. Examples of that were provided yesterday in my statement and in the statements of other participants.

Overwhelming evidence of that was also provided during today’s open debate on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question. The overwhelming majority of the UN resolutions on Palestine have not been implemented. The second debate I have mentioned is not over yet. Many speakers have called for taking resolute steps. We hold a similar view. The first steps must include the termination of hostilities, a permanent ceasefire, the settlement of critical humanitarian problems and, of course, the termination of Israel’s actions to create illegal settlements. We hope that if or when this is done, this will create conditions for resuming negotiations on the implementation of UN decisions on the establishment of the Palestinian state that would live in peace and security with Israel.

Our Presidency continues. Another round of open debates has been scheduled for July 19. It will be chaired by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin. That meeting will be devoted to relations between the United Nations Organisation, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

I have held a series of bilateral meetings with the foreign ministers of Arab countries, with Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary Peter Szijjarto, and with Head of the Federal Department (Minister) of Foreign Affairs of the Swiss Confederation Ignazio Cassis.

Question: President Zelensky on Monday said that Russia should be represented at the second peace summit on Ukraine in November. Will you consider participating? What do you expect from that?

Sergey Lavrov: We have provided our assessments in this regard on multiple occasions.

The second summit is a natural follow-up to the process that began almost a year ago.

Back then, a small group of countries convened in Copenhagen (followed by several more meetings), which became known as the Copenhagen format. Each time, our Western colleagues and the Ukrainian regime used every trick up their sleeve and every promise they could come up with to bring in as many countries as possible.

The most recent Copenhagen-format meeting was held in Davos in January on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum. It was immediately followed by the first ministerial Security Council meeting on the Palestine issue in New York which was attended by many ministers and hosted by France. I was there to take part in it. The head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of the Swiss Confederation, Ignazio Cassis, was there as well,

I met with him at his request. He brought to my attention the fact that one more Copenhagen-format meeting had been held on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, following which he addressed the media saying that reaching an agreement without Russia was impossible. I asked him right away why they held this meeting if he holds this view. There was no answer. In fact, the real answer is that they are set on pushing through the Zelensky plan, which starkly resembles an ultimatum, at any cost. My Swiss colleague notified me in January that they would hold a peace summit after the Copenhagen-format meetings. But, as you are aware, the summit failed to materialise.

It turned out to be a peace conference. A few heads of state did attend, but the vast majority of those who ended up attending were lower-level officials. A meeting was held in Bürgenstock, Switzerland, a month ago, after which the vast majority of the participants were quite circumspect, if not negative, in their assessments of its outcome. We can discuss this later.

I will follow up on the second conference that you mentioned. Following the Bürgenstock meeting, Vladimir Zelensky and other Western officials started talking about this second conference mentioning not just Switzerland, but other countries that could become a platform for the second round as well. However, when discussing the agenda, they have, in one way or another, formulated an absolutely one-sided approach that we and many other parties that are sincerely interested in peace found unacceptable.

Vladimir Zelensky said after the meeting in Bürgenstock that they had made the first step in the form of a leap to the peace summit. Now, they need to prepare a document to put on the table before Russia in order for different “powerful” countries to try to put a just end to this war. It’s hard to understand what this means. The only thing is clear that the Zelensky formula, which has been on the table for a long time now, is still at the heart of these efforts.

Speaking of peace endeavours, everyone is talking about Bürgenstock for some reason. No one is talking about multiple PRCs initiatives which it put forward in February 2023 and later.

Not long ago, China and Brazil formalised several elements of the initiative. I will not go over them at this point. What makes them starkly different from the Zelensky formula and from what is done at the get-togethers that are held as part of the Copenhagen format is that, first, China, Brazil and many other countries that have joined them advocate convening a conference on the basis and principles that will be accepted by all parties.

Number two (this concerns the subject of the dialogue) is that China, in its first initiative, clearly stated the need to start by addressing the root causes of the ongoing crisis in Europe and to work out agreements to eliminate these causes. No one during the meetings in Copenhagen or Bürgenstock mentioned the root causes. There are many of them. We discussed them at length, including yesterday. They include the coup, the ban on the Russian language, military and physical actions with the use of the army against the Ukrainian regions which refused to recognise the legitimacy of those who came to power as a result of the coup, and the Minsk agreements, which no one was going to act upon.

Look at the evolution of this entire process. We are being told that Russia must fall back to the 1991 borders. The problem is that we have been lied to at all times.

Had the agreement that President Yanukovich signed with the opposition in February 2014 been fulfilled (it consisted of creating a government of national unity and preparing early presidential elections), Ukraine would still be within the 1991 borders. But this agreement was foiled by the very people from the opposition who signed it. After the coup, they occupied administrative buildings and declared that they were cancelling the status of the Russian language in Ukraine and demanded that Crimea be liberated from the Russian population, that is, the Ukrainian citizens living in Crimea. It was not possible to keep Ukraine within the 1991 borders. Crimea held a referendum. None of the objective observers had any doubts about this expression of will. It reunited with Russia.

In eastern Ukraine, those who refused to accept the coup were declared terrorists. Armed forces, combat aviation, and artillery were used against them. They began to resist. This part of Ukraine had ceased to be such back then in fact.

The Minsk agreements stipulated that these republics, which initially declared independence, would remain within Ukraine, but they should be accorded a special, not too complicated, status which included the right to use the Russian language, to have their own police (just like here, every state has their own police), and to be involved in consultations when appointing prosecutors and judges. Not much, really. It’s not much different from what French President Macron promised Corsica. I’m not sure if he will succeed in delivering on that promise. Had the Minsk agreements been implemented, Ukraine would still be within the 1991 borders minus Crimea. Nobody even mentioned Crimea at that time. It didn’t work out, either.

We discussed in detail the reasons behind the special military operation, emphasising the inevitability of this step as repeatedly highlighted by President Vladimir Putin. This action followed years of warnings demanding a halt to NATO’s eastward expansion and the need to curb the Nazi regime in Ukraine, which was legally and physically eradicating everything Russian, as well as to ensure the safety of people living on lands settled by their ancestors. Had the agreement reached between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Istanbul in April 2022 been signed, Ukraine would have remained within its 1991 borders, minus Crimea and the territories controlled by Russian troops at that time. It became evident that we were misled when we were told that this agreement was the path to peace. The Ukrainian negotiators might have been sincere when they endorsed and initialled the document. However, as chief negotiator David Arakhamia later admitted in a television interview, the then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson intervened and forbade them from implementing the agreement. Consequently, it was never formalised.

Whenever we, in a spirit of goodwill, sincerely attempted to resolve this decade old crisis and reached mutual understanding, these agreements were inevitably undermined – not by us, but by the Ukrainians and their patrons. President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated, including very recently, that we are ready to discuss security issues in Europe. This, of course, includes eliminating its root causes and ensuring Russia’s legitimate security interests. Our approach aims not to compromise anyone else’s security interests, but to reach comprehensive agreements.

The OSCE has failed because its founding principles – equal and indivisible security, ensuring that no participant strengthens their security at the expense of others – have been trampled on. The OSCE, like NATO, embodies the Euro-Atlantic security concept, encompassing Europe and the countries across the Atlantic: Canada and the United States. It has become evident that within both NATO and the OSCE, Washington’s sole objective is to subjugate all member countries and the executive offices of these organisations.

The European Union has signed an agreement with NATO, acknowledging the North Atlantic Alliance as a senior partner and pledging to support it by providing territory, coordinating defence policies, and more.

We are open to negotiations. However, given the disappointing history of talks and consultations with the West and Ukraine, especially concerning the European security agreement, which I hope will be reached eventually (and will address the Ukraine crisis), we will be very careful with the wording. We will ensure that the document includes safeguards against repeated misinterpretations and dishonest practices that have plagued past agreements, as I have briefly outlined.

Question: On May 28, US President Joe Biden, said in an interview, I quote, “China got an economy that’s on the brink.” According to your observation, how is the performance of the Chinese economy? Can you tell us why an economy that’s on the brink would be a what NATO called decisive enabler of the Ukrainian conflict?

Sergey Lavrov: How does this statement compare to reality? The Chinese economy is growing powerfully and rapidly, despite attempts to curb it.

Recently, during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to France, alongside meetings with President Emmanuel Macron, he also engaged with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Following these talks, EU representatives publicly demanded that China reduce its production of high-tech goods, citing the West’s competitive disadvantage. How does this align with the principles of a free market and fair competition?

The West aims to slow down China’s economy. In addition to demands to halt the production of affordable and high-quality products, sanctions are being imposed to hinder the technological advancement of China in various sectors. However, there should be no doubt: the more restrictions are imposed – restrictions that completely undermine the globalisation model and the unity of the world economy championed by the West – and the more aggressively the masters of the Bretton Woods system act, the more actively and efficiently the targeted countries will work to develop their own technologies and products. These include the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, and many others.

I recently read an interesting statement by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg regarding the military exercises conducted between China and Belarus on Belarusian territory. He declared with great emphasis that this was a dangerous development because China was getting closer to NATO. However, it’s important to note that the Americans have long been approaching China and are surrounding both the PRC and Russia. This is evident through bloc structures such as AUKUS and the US-Japan-South Korea trio. The United States and South Korea are even finalising agreements on a joint nuclear policy, among other moves. They are also attempting to divide ASEAN by pulling certain countries into their closed bloc structures. Additionally, NATO has decided to extend its infrastructure into the Indo-Pacific region, and practical steps toward this goal are already underway.

Answering a question about NATO’s long-standing claim of being a defensive alliance that protects the territories of its member countries, Jens Stoltenberg said that while NATO remains a defensive alliance, the threats it faces are now global, necessitating its presence in the Indo-Pacific region.

The aggressive and unfair nature of this stance is evident to all. Alongside the PRC and our other partners within the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, ASEAN, and the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf, we advocate for a Eurasian security model. This model will be based on equality, indivisibility of security, and mutual consideration of interests across the board. Achieving this model will take considerable time and effort.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin announced this initiative a month ago during his address at the Foreign Ministry. He emphasised that this initiative envisions an open Eurasian security system that welcomes all states and organisations across the Eurasian continent, including those in the western part of Eurasia, under the condition that these countries recognise the potential pitfalls of NATO-centric blocs.

You are aware of Europe’s economic challenges, which bears the brunt of sanctions and can no longer purchase Russian gas. While this shift hasn’t fully materialised, discussions are underway. The Nord Stream gas pipelines, crucial for Germany’s and Europe’s economic stability, have been blown up. Since sanctions were imposed, Europe has incurred an additional 200 billion euros in energy costs. In response to inflation, the United States enacted various laws that prompted European businesses to relocate there, contributing to Europe’s deindustrialisation.

Whether China is on the brink or not, the assessment of the Chinese economy should hinge on factual evidence instead of geopolitical interests.

Question: To what extent can the US applying double standards in the Middle East lead to a full-scale war in the region? The country is stonewalling the UN Security Council resolution regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, including the Gaza ceasefire, while at the same time demonising Hamas as well as Hezbollah in Lebanon. Does this not run a risk of Iran entering into a full-scale, direct and open war with Israel?

Sergey Lavrov: The statements made by the previous Iranian leadership and the newly elected president reflect a responsible approach. Iran is not interested in escalation. According to analysts, including US and European experts, the actual development of events shows that the side that’s interested in escalation is Israel.

Hezbollah is acting with great restraint. Its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has made several public statements that confirm this stance. But it looks like someone is trying to provoke them into full-scale engagement. Again, according to analysts, the purpose of a possible provocation is to get the US directly involved in this conflict, with its armed forces engaged.

I hope that the West will do its best to ensure that such ideas (if the Israeli leaders have any) remain ideas, or better still, are forgotten. We are making efforts to calm this situation.

Speaking of Iranian interests, of course we must mention Yemen. Of course, the terrorist attack was an unacceptable response to Israel’s collective punishment operation in the Gaza Strip. We have always said that. However, collective punishment undercuts international humanitarian law. You cannot address one violation by means of other violations of the same nature.

Ansar Allah, the Houthis, have pledged to take the side of the Palestinian people, to help overcome the blockade and end the war by using their capabilities to disrupt shipping in the Red Sea, attacking any Israel-bound ship carrying goods.

The United States and Britain reacted by sending warships to the region instead of finding de-escalation solutions, talking to Israel, and negotiating ways to enact the resolutions, which were finally passed after four or five vetoes but remained on paper. Instead, they resorted to military force, shelling Yemeni territory, including targets that have nothing to do with Ansar Allah.

There are many factors in the region that certain politicians seek to use to foment a major war there, partly to be able to blame Iran and use the latest weapons against it.

This is a short-sighted and pointless policy. We are strongly opposed to it. The Arab countries are our most important allies – the Muslim world, the League of Arab States (LAS) and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). This cannot be allowed to happen. I hope that we will succeed.

Question: Mr Minister, how do you foresee Russia-US relations if former president Trump is elected, particularly with his vice presidential pick, James David Vance , who has commented extensively about Ukraine? I asked you this question in January but things have changed, and now he is the nominee of the GOP.

Sergey Lavrov: Some things have changed, but not our position. You know that we do not interfere in the internal affairs of other states, including the United States.

We used to work with US President Donald Trump. We had contacts. He met with President Vladimir Putin. He hosted me at the White House a few times. Irrespective of his sentiment at the time, it was during Trump’s presidency that the sanctions war began. To be fair, it had been President Obama who started it. But under Trump, more sanctions were imposed, economic and diplomatic sanctions. However, at that time, dialogue was underway between Russia and Washington, at the highest levels. Now there is no such dialogue.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden met in Geneva in June 2021. But after the start of our special military operation, after we explained exhaustively that we had had no other choice but to defend our security interests and protect the people whom the Kiev regime labelled terrorists and bombed on a daily basis, there were no longer any contacts.

There are sporadic talks taking place, telephone conversations at times. Also, CIA Director William Burns met with Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Director Sergey Naryshkin last year on neutral territory. There are some phone calls at various levels. But we do not see anything substantive happening.

Jake Sullivan announced again recently that they absolutely had to resume dialogue with Russia on strategic stability. He said they were making repeated proposals, which Russia kept rejecting. This is shifting blame, that’s what it is.

The truth is that dialogue on strategic stability requires mutually respectful and equal relations. All of this is set out in our documents, including the New START treaty. But [that’s not the case] when Russia is being publicly labelled an enemy, the main threat, when the other side is determined to do everything possible for Ukraine to win. US President Biden said recently that, if Russia wins in Ukraine, that would be the end of Poland, and other countries, all the way to the Balkans, would feel more independent and comport themselves in a more independent way.

If we give some thought to this, it’s a very deep thought. It suggests that the Russians need to be defeated in Ukraine for the US to keep all of Europe under its command.

Again, President Vladimir Putin has mentioned this repeatedly – we will be ready to work with any US leader that the American people elect, and who is willing to engage in an equitable and mutually respectful dialogue. As a reminder, during the Trump administration, despite the very serious sanctions, there was still dialogue underway.

Yesterday, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó dedicated a great deal of his statement to the way the rest of the European Union are beginning to sabotage and boycott the events of the Hungarian presidency after Viktor Orban travelled to Moscow and China, and because he is advocating for peace. This is outrageous. The European Union, which was established  to ensure the well-being and stability of all participants, has now completely morphed into an appendage of NATO. And it is no less aggressive, and perhaps even more aggressive in demanding Russia’s defeat. What kind of strategic dialogue is this?

Again, if and when our colleagues give this a second thought, and if they surmount this obsession with their own exceptionalism, their own impunity and superiority, we will sit down with them and talk. We’ll listen to what they have to tell us. But if this takes running around and trying to persuade them, that’s not how we operate; it’s not part of our tradition.

Question: Don’t you see that the war in Gaza also shows a major failure of the international community, failure of international law and the ICJ to impose its provisional measures, four resolutions of the Security Council, and two resolutions of the General Assembly? And yet the genocide war is continuing. How do you see common areas between the war in Gaza, supported by NATO members, especially he US, and the war in Ukraine, supported by NATO as well?

Sergey Lavrov: First, you are absolutely right. However, it is not the situation in Gaza that is a failure of the international community. The entire situation with the fulfilment of UN resolutions on the Palestinian state, which should have been established simultaneously with the State of Israel within different boundaries compared to the tiny area where Palestinians are living now, is a failure. I spoke about this in detail today, and the majority of delegations spoke about this at length too. Courtenay Rattray, Chef de Cabinet of the UN Secretary-General, who read out the address by Antonio Guterres, clearly told the truth.

The truth is that all of us talk about implementing resolutions and name them, for example, on creating a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders and capital in East Jerusalem, on the return of refugees, and on the Palestinian state living in peace and security with Israel. Mr Rattray also explained how it looked on the ground, the territories the Palestinians had in 1967 and the territory the Palestinian National Authority controls now on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. The Gaza Strip is a separate matter altogether. Israel is saying again that it needs to maintain full control of Gaza, and that it would guard the perimeter. It will be the continuation of the blockade.

As you said correctly, there have been many resolutions, and almost none of them has been implemented. I remember the Quartet of international mediators adopting a roadmap in the early 2000s, which everyone applauded. It set out every move in detail, week after week and month after month. Under the roadmap, a Palestinian state was to be established within a year, with certain compromises compared to the initial resolutions. This is sad.

As for common areas between support for Israel and for Ukraine, there are many common areas indeed. I have cited figures to show that about 40,000 civilians, most of them women and children, have died and about 80,000 have been wounded in Gaza over the past 10 months. The losses of both sides – Donbass and Ukraine – over 10 years since the state coup are half as big. The number of casualties [in Gaza] is numbing.

Since you have asked, I would like to say that one of the aspects in this situation concerns the role of the UN and its Secretariat, its Secretary-General. When we recently targeted military and related energy infrastructure in Ukraine, one of our missiles was hit by a Ukrainian air defence system that was deployed amid residential and social facilities, which is prohibited by international humanitarian law. The fragments of that missile fell on the children’s hospital Okhmatdet (Protection of Maternity and Childhood) in Kiev, killing two and wounding about 20 people. Next morning, Spokesperson for the Secretary-General Stephane Dujarric – you know him very well – accused Russia on behalf of the Secretary-General and said that such attacks “must end immediately.”

At the start of the operation in Gaza, following the terrorist attack of October 7, 2023, the Al-Ahli Hospital was targeted. It happened on October 17, 2023. According to different estimates, 80 people were killed and several hundred were wounded in that attack. The UN Secretary-General issued a long comment without saying who delivered the strikes. He condemned the attacks and warned against such violations of international humanitarian law. By that time, it was clear to everyone who did that. When Stephane Dujarric was asked the day after if the guilty party had been identified, he replied that there was nothing he could add to what had been said the day before. It is a clear case of double standards. I believe that you have seen such examples at the briefings you attend. This is regrettable.

Article 100 of the UN Charter stipulates the impartiality and neutrality of UN officials. It is unacceptable that the collective West is using UN bodies in its interests.

Question: My question is somewhat a follow-up to questions regarding J. D. Vance’s recent comments, not only about him criticising aid to Ukraine, but he also called for negotiated peace in Ukraine, and he’s been a critic of the Biden administration’s overall policy when it comes to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. I’d like to get your views on his recent comments about aid to Ukraine, and also what would final borders look like in a negotiated settlement agreed by Moscow? Should, for example, senator Vance’s suggestions move forward?

Sergey Lavrov: I’ve heard the same as you. He advocates peace and ending the aid. This is something we can only welcome. Indeed, halting the influx of weapons into Ukraine would lead to an end to the war. Then, we can pursue solutions that consider not only the realities on the ground but also in public life. These realities include the fact that the peace agreements in April 2022 were derailed by then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson with the support of the United States. If he hadn’t done this, a significant portion of the territories that held referendums and subsequently became part of Russia would have remained within Ukraine. However, they opted for referendums because they foresaw that Western interference would derail any agreements, and they perceived the Kiev regime as unreliable and incapable of negotiations.

As I mentioned earlier, since then, four regions – the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, and the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions – have conducted referendums and joined Russia. This is enshrined in our Constitution and is indisputable. While not all territories have been liberated there yet, we cannot abandon people who voted to reunite with Russia under oppression of a regime that seeks to eradicate everything that is Russian.

I highlighted a crucial point in my remarks. It’s commendable that our Chinese friends emphasised the importance of understanding and eliminating the underlying causes. None of the current initiatives concerning Ukraine address these root causes. In all of Zelensky’s Western-backed “peace formulas” and those promoted by the West, there is no mention of human rights or national minorities, topics they typically emphasise. The question arises: why this omission?

I’ll share this confidentially. We had undisclosed communications with the Americans through political scientists familiar with each other and their governments’ policies. Our political scientists posed this question: in the event of a settlement, it’s likely that some parts of Ukraine (such as the western regions) will remain under the authority of those who sign peace agreements. Do you, Americans, support including clauses in these agreements to repeal laws banning the Russian language in all spheres of life? They responded that they do not intervene in Ukraine’s internal affairs, asserting that it’s for Ukrainians themselves to decide.

Just going back to Burgenstock, the Zelensky formula is a ten-point plan. It is a ten-point plan from the very outset, and one of those points is that Russia must revert to 1991 borders, a tribunal needs to be established to bring to trial the Russian leadership, as well as reparations, restrictions on the weapons that Russia may have near the Ukrainian territory. Also, it included food, power, nuclear safety, humanitarian issues, exchange of prisoners of war and so on. These plans are extremely arrogant, and this is a dead end. This is obvious. They were trying to invite as many people as possible to these events, specifically, Burgenstock as a matter of priority. They were trying to coax the participants to focus on those parts of the plan about which there can be no doubts, such as food supplies, power and so on. In Burgenstock, there were only three topics on the agenda. This is quite telling, in fact. The food security which the West itself is undermining by forcing the European Union and its own producers to suffer for the benefit of Ukrainian farmers. As everyone knows, they produce grain that is not of high quality, nor is it cheap. But this is a separate issue.

In fact, we very much value the efforts of the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres directed at implementing the UN-Russia Memorandum, which includes steps for removing restrictions on Russian fertiliser and foodstuffs exports.

The next point is nuclear security. Initially, it included the security of energy supplies. I wondered why they left nuclear security there, and why they took out energy security. Had they kept energy security there, we would have had to discuss who had blown up the Nord Streams. But they wanted to divert attention from this topic as soon as possible, although we will insist on getting to the bottom of things. At the Security Council, we will remind everyone that this topic is still relevant because Sweden, which said that it was conducting its own investigation that lasted for 18 months, said that they did not find anything and the case was closed. We think that this is inappropriate for any politician. Germany is staying silent on the issue.

So, we are going to demand whenever the accusations are levelled at us, and I will write another letter to the Secretary-General. In April 2022, Bucha was used to disrupt the peace deal. I said on numerous occasions at the Security Council that if they harboured so much ire because of this supposedly aggressive attack by the Russian Army on civilians, then why are they no longer talking about this? In order to somehow explain what happened in Bucha, we asked for the names of people whose bodies were shown in BBC reports, but no one even intended to give us those lists.

Nor does Germany intend to share the tests they ran on the late Alexey Navalny, tests, on the basis of which they said we had poisoned him. We asked them for those test results, and they said “sorry, we cannot.” They said that, if they share the test results, this would give us intelligence on German biological weapons. If you do not want to share that, then how can you accuse us? This raises a lot of questions. I have a whole list of them, in fact.

And we are going to insist on getting the truth from the West because, unless we do that, there will be no trust.

Regarding energy, the Nord Stream pipelines, pipeline gas, liquefied natural gas (that they are trying to ban), all of that is directly linked to the food crisis. In the EU, production of fertiliser has fallen sharply as a result of very high gas prices. This is all inextricably linked. It is inappropriate for any country to accuse the Russian Federation of everything, especially for those states, which are members of the UN Security Council. They should recognise their responsibility for what they are saying.

Question: Could you give your observations on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to Moscow? And what are your reactions to the opposition that India fazes for the energy cooperation with Russia?

Sergey Lavrov: I think India is a great power, which sets its own national interests and chooses its partners. We know that India is being subject to enormous and completely unjustified pressure in the international arena.

Recently, Vladimir Zelensky, or someone from Zelensky’s team, spoke insultingly about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s trip to Russia, calling it a stab in the back of all peace efforts. The Indian Foreign Ministry summoned the Ukrainian ambassador and explained to him how he should be behaving.

Before that, there were a lot of examples when Ukrainian ambassadors behaved as if they were hooligans. There was Ambassador to Germany Andrey Melnik who was consistently outraged that Olaf Scholtz is not giving Ukraine enough money and enough weapons. In an interview, he publicly called the chancellor of Germany an offended liver sausage. This is a quote; you can find it online.

Ukraine Ambassador to Kazakhstan Pyotr Vrublevsky publicly said in an interview that they would do everything they can to kill as many Russians as possible so that their children had less work to do, and that they will see this job through to the end.

So, I believe that India is doing everything right. My colleague, Foreign Minister of India Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, when answering a question after a tour of Western states why they are buying more oil from Russia, cited statistics showing that the West has also increased the purchases of gas and oil from the Russian Federation, despite some of the restrictions. Then, Mr Jaishankar went on to say that India will decide for itself how to trade, with whom, and how to defend its national interests.

The fact that the West is exhibiting its displeasure to powers like China and India shows their lack of erudition, their inability to partake in diplomacy, and also speaks about the failure of their political analysts, because subduing these two great Asian powers… Keep dreaming, as they say. The course they chose against all countries is really beneath them, but in particular, speaking this way with these two giants…

Question: You say that there must be new world order that is multipolar. You say it is already happening. What role do you see for the United States in the new world order?

Sergey Lavrov: The United States should simply accept the reality and stop claiming it will be in charge of everything everywhere.

Michael Bohm is a freelance journalist who is working in Russia. He gets invited to different talk shows. He is fluent in Russian. In a recent interview, he was asked the same question: what is the United States’ role in a multipolar world? He answered that whenever the United States went into self-isolation, devastating wars and conflicts broke out, and when it entered the world stage as a leader, there were fewer wars. I respect journalism, but not enough to accept this point of view. Not because he can’t say what is better or worse, but because this is not true.

The United States accessed the world stage in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. How did that end? Did they see any peaceful changes for the better? Now, the Americans repeat like a mantra that they will “support Ukraine for as long as it takes.” How long is that? Twenty years, as it was in Afghanistan, before they realised they had lost? Or, in Iraq, which they supposedly left, but are now trying to hold on in defiance of the Iraqi parliament’s decision to the effect that the United States should withdraw its troops? Or, will they approach Ukraine the same way they approached Libya? How long did it take them to devastate Libya? Now, everyone is “piecing the pots together” for them.

Multipolar world is real. Nobody made it up. Look at the share of the United States and the West in global GDP 50 or 20 years ago and now. Two years ago, the five BRICS countries outdid the G7 countries in terms of GNP and purchasing power parity. Now, with five more nations joining BRICS, that gap will widen. However, the United States is doing everything to ensure that this real weight of the global economy and finance in the new growth centres does not get reflected in the activities of the IMF and the World Bank.

The United States is holding on to its voting bloc (about 15 percent) which, according to the IMF rules, allows it to veto decisions. To be fair, these quotas and votes should have been redistributed a long time ago. This is what the BRICS countries are insisting upon. This will be one of the main economic and financial issues at the BRICS summit in Kazan this October.

The WTO was presented to us as the best available regulator of fair world trade. As soon as China, which grew its economy on the principles of globalisation invented by the Americans, started overtaking the United States in terms of competition and beat them economically, the Americans simply closed the WTO dispute settlement body. They used technical tricks. There is no more quorum there. For many years, all fair complaints filed by the PRC against the protectionist policy of the United States have been lying unanswered. The WTO reform is on the BRICS agenda as well. We will pursue it.

These subjects will certainly dominate the G20 summit agenda in Rio de Janeiro. This is precisely the entity that should consider the realities of the global economy without bias and take steps to grow it to make sure that mutual benefit matches the countries’ contribution to the global economy.

In Eurasia, there is the SCO, the EAEU and ASEAN. These associations have agreements with China to harmonise integration projects with China’s Belt and Road project. There is also the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf. All of these organisations have established contacts among themselves, thus creating a fabric of future material interaction on the Eurasian continent that is based on the comparative advantages of a single space, which possesses untold  riches in terms of natural resources and offers the most important global maritime communications. We are encouraging these processes.

After the United States and its allies imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia, Iran, Venezuela, China and other countries, African and Latin American countries began to think about ways to protect themselves against such tantrums. After all, no one can be sure who the Americans will get angry at next.

At last year’s BRICS summit, Brazilian President Lula da Silva strongly promoted the idea of creating alternative payment platforms and settlement mechanisms within BRICS. Finance ministers and central bank governors of the association are working on this and will draft recommendations for the summit in Kazan. The President of Brazil proposed to consider moving towards creating a common currency within CELAC. Everyone is trying to safeguard themselves.

Reportedly, Saudi Arabia is thinking about reducing its dependence on the dollar against the backdrop of the United States and the collective West’s attempts to steal Russian money. The process of dedollarisation is underway and cannot be stopped. Donald Trump’s name came up today. He said that it was suicidal for the United States. But they set this process off themselves.

Groups of regional associations such as the African Union, CELAC, and Asian organisations that I mentioned maintain contacts. At the global level, BRICS is well placed to serve as a harmoniser of processes among the Global Majority countries.

The G20, where the Global Majority countries will continue to communicate with the West, if it is willing to do so in a fair manner, and the UN, where everyone is represented and should talk to each other remain in place. Yesterday, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó said that he always knew the UN had been created for the countries to communicate with each other. However, this is not the case now: the West decided that the world organisation exists to back up its outlandish ambitions to play the role of a hegemon on the world stage.

I believe that at some point the United States will realise that it is better to be part of a constructive process than to run around with a sanctions or military baton and make everyone dance to its tune. The tune changes every four years. And everyone is trying to adapt. But given the specifics of the domestic political processes in the United States, they realise that this is not an easy thing to do.

Question: You had a meeting with the Foreign Minister of Lebanon. Did you discuss a ceasefire on the border with Israel, or are the sides ready for an all-out war?

Sergey Lavrov: I have already commented on that issue. Neither Hezbollah nor the Lebanese government or Iran want an all-out war. It is rumoured that it is what certain forces in Israel want. They want to provoke a big full-blown war in the hope of involving the United States in it. These are certainly extremely dangerous plans, which set personal ambitions above he interests of their own people and other nations in the region.

Question: I find your explanations, particularly on economic links, very rewarding and things I haven’t thought of. Other times I find it has a feeling of gaslighting, when Russia aimed fire at a children’s hospital in Ukraine, and there is enough material on Bucha, as there is on Navalny. What I really wanted to ask you is the appreciation of Russian culture, art, music and so forth, is done by journalists who have ties to Russia and have grown up speaking the language, whether Evan Gershkovich or Masha Gessen. There are Russian-born journalists, journalists of the Russian culture. And I am surprised that Russia doesn’t try to appeal to them rather than punishing them. Not every story will be a good story, but they are capable of bringing the culture of Russia to the world.

Sergey Lavrov: You have said that there is enough material on the children’s hospital and Bucha. But it is not what I was talking about.

Enough “material” can be produced, especially when there are journalists who understand the “task.” I said a very specific thing: Can we have the list of people whose bodies BBC correspondents showed in Bucha? No, we can’t. Nobody has given it to us.

As for Navalny, every life is priceless. I am not trying to be ambiguous. The Russian state has been accused of poisoning him. The tests were in a German military hospital. Earlier he had been turned over to his wife in a Russian civilian hospital – it happened very quickly, we didn’t find anything. Nothing was found in a German civilian hospital either. But something was found in a Bundeswehr hospital. We just asked to be shown the test results. We were accused. Do you think it is fair to accuse us yet not show us the test results? If so, you should go into American politics.

Which journalists did you mention?

Question: Evan Gershkovich and Masha Gessen.

Sergey Lavrov: Maria Zakharova has recently put out a post in which she quoted Somerset Maugham and other writers and journalists to show that using journalists on intelligence missions is quite normal, at least in the Anglo-Saxon tradition.

We have irrefutable evidence showing that Evan Gershkovich was on a spy mission. Under an agreement reached by President Vladimir Putin and President Joe Biden in June 2021, the special services of Russia and the United States maintain contacts to see if such people can be swapped. Everybody knows that this issue bears no haste. The Americans sometimes make public statements, which does not help. But there are such contacts. It has nothing to do with attacks on journalism.

We are concerned about the freedom of the media and opinions as you are. We did not immediately respond when you started expelling our journalists and closing entire bureaus.  I discussed this issue with Maria Zakharova. I believed that we should not do what they were doing, that we should remain true to our principles and the principles of the OSCE. But then it came to disgusting, reckless and aggressive steps. So, it’s an eye for an eye then.

Maria Zakharova: Evelyn, we know about your experience. You are a prominent journalist. Could you help us get the list of persons allegedly killed in Bucha? Even the UN Secretary-General couldn’t help us.

Sergey Lavrov: It would be good if journalists as members of an “investigative” profession started to at least ask this question. Or is it of no interest? Dozens of people were killed.

I wish you success in your difficult profession. I hope there will be as few bans in your profession as possible.

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