Sergey Lavrov: “Western hypocrisy reveals one truth: refusal to accept the emergent Multipolar Era”

Photo: MFA

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with Vesti programme.

Moscow, March 26, 2025

Question: What core geopolitical principles were established by the decisions of the Yalta Conference?

Sergey Lavrov: The principles were straightforward. I recently addressed this topic and even authored an article, given the growing discourse: “Observe Europe’s current trajectory – it has gone rogue. America now acts unilaterally, seeking global dominance and profit without accountability. The Yalta-Potsdam system is obsolete. Let us devise a new framework.”

The matter at hand does not stem from any deficiency within the international legal framework. The legal embodiment of Yalta and Potsdam resides in the United Nations Charter. Who could possibly oppose its principles?

Examine the document. You will find no clause objectionable to reasonable minds. The United Nations is founded upon the sovereign equality of states. How else could it function, given that all are equal? This principle is taught in Orthodoxy and other world religions alike.

The imperative remains to uphold equality and the right of nations to self-determination. This very principle underpinned the decolonisation process that unfolded fifteen years after the UN establishment and the Charter’s ratification. African peoples will ultimately conclude that those governing them from metropolitan capitals – through “overseers on the ground” – fail to represent their interests. The parallel is exact with the ultra-nationalists who seized power in Ukraine after February 2014. It was immediately apparent they did not reflect the aspirations of the populations of Crimea, Donbass, or Novorossiya. This is self-evident.

The General Assembly, in one of its documents (when comprehensively analysing the UN Charter principles), achieved consensus: territorial integrity must be respected in states whose governments honour the right to self-determination, thereby legitimately representing all peoples within their borders.

Plainly, Ukraine’s current leadership – manipulated by Western puppet-masters – fails to represent vast swathes of its population. Crimea, Donbass, and Novorossiya constitute settled matters, particularly given how referenda outcomes in these territories have been enshrined in our Constitution.

The principle of territorial integrity, already addressed, demands reciprocity: respect your people if you expect your borders to be respected. Do not prohibit native languages, historical memory, or ancestral child-rearing traditions. This, too, resonates with the UN Charter, which mandates respect for human rights irrespective of race, sex, language, or religion.

In Ukraine, canonical religious practice and the Russian language face prohibition. Meanwhile, the West parades its human rights banner globally, wielding it opportunistically to censure Venezuela, Iran, Russia, China, or whomever else. In every bilateral or multilateral forum, Western representatives posture as beacons of human rights and rule of law.

Ursula von der Leyen, alluding to President Donald Trump’s return to power in the United States, recently claimed European values (democracy, human rights, rule of law) face grave peril. This comes from an official who wilfully ignores laws exterminating the Russian language, media, culture, and the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church – sister institution to Russia’s Orthodox Church – enacted by the Nazi regime of Vladimir Zelensky and his predecessor Petr Poroshenko.

Western hypocrisy reveals one truth: refusal to accept the emergent multipolar era. All nations must stand equal, mutual respect must prevail, and competition must be honourable. When the Soviet Union dissolved, the West lectured us about a new epoch and “end of history.” We are all on the same page now: globalisation, fair competition, and presumption of innocence. These principles now lie discarded.

In recent pronouncements by Ursula von der Leyen and other European Union leaders (I do not intend to offend all, but the majority), it is conspicuously evident that, irrespective of circumstances, “the way we interpret democracy is how it must be.” In Ukraine, it is permissible to prohibit the Russian language. In Switzerland, envisage a ban on French, or in Ireland, English (currently, the English and the Irish are at odds there). Were the English language to be banned in Ireland, one would witness an outcry reaching the heavens. Numerous analogous examples abound. It was determined that in Romania, Călin Georgescu would not run for the presidency, notwithstanding the Constitutional Court of the country having cleared him of all suspicions. Yet the Central Electoral Commission declared: “We do not care about the Constitutional Court; the President has ordered us not to allow ‘this one’ to proceed because he does not denounce Vladimir Putin and Russia.”

The genetic inclination of the West to perpetually perceive itself as a hegemon thus continues to undermine the foundations of the Yalta-Potsdam system. This is a profoundly just system.

Recognising that we will be discussing the 80th anniversary, I have taken a quotation from Franklin D. Roosevelt, the then-President of the United States, who in March 1945 addressed the US Congress following the Yalta Conference. He stated: “The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man, or one party, or one Nation. It cannot be just an American peace, or a British peace, or a Russian, a French, or a Chinese peace. It cannot be a peace of large Nations or of small Nations. It must be a peace which rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world.” This, too, encapsulates the essence of the principles of the UN Charter, which the current leaders of the European Union have forgotten.

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