World
2023.02.16 09:36 GMT+8

Russian diplomacy to focus on ending Western hegemony: FM

Updated 2023.02.16 09:36 GMT+8
CGTN

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaks to the lower house of the Russian parliament, the State Duma, February 15, 2023. /CFP

Russia's upcoming foreign policy will focus on terminating the West's monopoly in international affairs, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday.

International affairs should be determined not by the West's "selfish interests," but on "a fair, universal basis of a balance of interests as required by the UN Charter," Lavrov said in a speech to the lower house of the Russian parliament, the State Duma.

"The United States and its allies are obsessed with a maniacal desire to revive the neo-colonial, unipolar world order to interfere with the objective process of the formation and rise of new world centers," he said.

Washington and its allies are waging "an all-out hybrid war against Russia that has been prepared for many years" to defeat Russia on the battlefield, destroy its economy, cordon off the country and turn it into an "outcast," Lavrov added.

He said the West's efforts to isolate Russia so far have failed, because "three-quarters of the world's countries have not joined the anti-Russian sanctions" and maintained their independent views on the situation in Ukraine.

Lavrov's statement came the same day European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled proposals for a new sanctions package against Russia, including additional export bans and measures to prevent the bypassing of restrictions.

In his speech, he also mentioned the explosion of Nord Stream pipelines, saying Western countries lied to Russia and hid the truth about the explosion, and Russia is preparing a proposal for a special meeting of the UN Security Council to call for an investigation into it.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh recently disclosed that the U.S. ordered the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines last year, saying the U.S. Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives last June in cooperation with Norway, which destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines three months later.

Lavrov also said that Russia is reviewing its obligations under international organizations and treaties and will suspend the payment of its contribution to certain international organizations where Russia's interests have been infringed upon.

Russia is also working on a list of international conventions and agreements from which it will withdraw, Lavrov added.

(With input from Xinhua)

Copyright © 

RELATED STORIES