Sergey Lavrov
Foreign Minister of Russia
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs
of the Russian Federation

Interview with Sergey Lavrov to the International Life magazine (August 19, 2023)

Question: The world has entered a period of confrontation between the concepts of global development: the position of Russia, China, and, in general, the non-Western position as opposed to the policy of Western dominance. Was it inevitable, based on the differences in civilizations, approaches to the use of force and international law, and understanding of the role of international institutions? In the context of the current challenges, what, in your opinion, is Russia's role and mission?

Sergey Lavrov: I cannot but agree that the concept of Western dominance promoted by the United States and the countries that obey it does not imply the harmonious development of the entire humanity. On the contrary, we have to deal with the constant desire of the Western minority for military-political and financial-economic expansion. The slogans change: they talk about globalization, then about Westernization, Americanization, universalization, liberalization, and so on. But the essence remains the same - to subjugate all independent players to its will, to force them to play by the rules favorable to the West.

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Stephen Lendman

Illegitimately installed Biden regime criminals run the empire of lies and forever wars.

A previous article discussed Trump’s politicized indictment, ignoring his crimes of war and against humanity because of far greater guilt by illegitimately installed Dems.

A state of war has existed against Russia by the empire of lies since 2014 by use of expendable Ukrainian Nazified and conscript foot soldiers. The former nation state was transformed into a platform for perpetual US aggression against Russia, its cannon fodder troops crushed by its military and tactical superiority.

Yet in its latest fake news edition, the NYT again trampled on truth as follows, saying:

(Nazi-infested) “Ukraine rebuffed a Russian offensive over the winter (sic).” “Now, it is Ukraine’s turn to go on the attack (sic).” “Signs are everywhere that it is coming in the next month or so (sic).”

Each time Nazi-infested Ukraine attempted an offensive, Russian forces smashed it decisively. Most arms and equipment supplied by the US/West to the regime were destroyed. According to Wagner Group founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, they captured and control the strategically important town of Artyomovsk. The regime sent tens of thousands of troops to their death in a futile effort to hold what’s lost to militarily superior Russian forces.

Yet the Biden regime continues throwing good money after bad in pursuit of a lost cause in Ukraine.

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Alexander Gusev,
Doctor of political sciences, professor

On January 20 this year, representatives of fifty countries of the anti-Russian coalition gathered at the US airbase in Ramstein, Germany, to discuss a plan to begin full-scale military operations against our country. No doubt, the participants of the meeting could call themselves an "advisory group" or a "Western partnership"; the essence of the decisions they made did not change. In fact, the participants in this gathering unequivocally declared that the West was waging a full-scale war against Russia.[1]

Moreover, immediately after the "Ramstein meetings" the head of the NATO Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer, confirmed that the alliance was ready for a direct confrontation with Russia, as its strategic goals extended beyond Ukraine. It is, therefore, no coincidence that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, following talks with South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor on 23 January this year, noted that the Ramstein meeting showed that the West is waging an almost real war against Russia, which it has long prepared, seeking to destroy everything Russian — from language to culture — in Ukraine.[2]

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Sergey Lavrov
Foreign Minister of Russia

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks at the General Debate of the 77th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, New York, September 24, 2022

Madame President,

Colleagues,
Ladies and gentlemen,

We are meeting at a both challenging and dramatic moment. Crisis situations are growing, and the international security situation is deteriorating rapidly.

Instead of engaging in honest dialogue and searching for compromises, we must deal with misinformation, as well as coarsely staged incidents and provocations. The policy line adopted by the West undermines trust in international institutions, which are tasked with coordinating various interests and international law as a guarantee of fairness to protect the weak from arbitrary rule. We are witnessing these negative trends in their quintessential form here in the United Nations, which rose from the rubble of German fascism and Japanese militarism and was established to promote friendly relations among its members and to prevent conflict among them.

The future world order is being decided today, as any unbiased observer can clearly see. The question is whether this world order will have a single hegemon that forces everyone else to live by its infamous rules, which only benefit this hegemon and no one else. Or whether this will be a democratic and just world free from blackmail and intimidation against the unwanted, as well as free from neo-Nazism and neo-colonialism. Russia firmly opts for the second option. Together with our allies, partners, and like-minded countries, we call for efforts to make this a reality.

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M. K. BHADRAKUMAR

Russian FM Sergey Lavrov rounded off a tour of African states in a blaze of media publicity despite US hopes to “isolate” him.

The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a press availability at the State Department on Wednesday made the dramatic announcement that he intends to speak to his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov “in the coming days...for the first time since the war began” in Ukraine on February 24.

Interestingly, he gave an alibi that harks back to the Soviet era — prisoner exchange. The US is offering a swap of a Russian entrepreneur Viktor Bout, who was arrested in Thailand in 2008 on a US warrant and later convicted to 25 years in prison on charges of weapons trafficking, in exchange for Brittney Griner, a basketball star who has been detained at Moscow airport on drug charges and, importantly, Paul Whelan, an ex-US Marine, who was arrested in Russia in 2018 and sentenced to 16 years in prison two years later on charges of espionage. Whelan surely was a prize catch for the Russians. The American ambassador in Moscow had been visiting him in prison.

Blinken also added a second topic he’d like to discuss with Lavrov —implementation of the recent “grain deal”. Washington played no role in negotiating the deal and is presumably hoping to make a lateral entry into the matrix now. Blinken claimed he is “seeing and hearing around the world a desperate need for food, a desperate need for prices to decrease. And if we can help through our direct diplomacy encourage the Russians to make good on the commitments they’ve made, that will help people around the world, and I’m determined to do it.”

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Sergey Lavrov
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs
of the Russian Federation

Question (translated from French): The special military operation in Ukraine is going on for three months. Since its beginning, Russia has faced problems both on the battlefield and the international scene, where it is being accused of war crimes. What is the result of this military operation? Can you sum it up now? Is it a success or, more likely, a failure? A few days ago, you said: “The “collective West” has declared total hybrid war against us… We did everything in our power to avoid a direct clash. But they issued a challenge and we have accepted it.” What did you mean? How do you want to respond? Does this mean that the third world war could start in a week or in a month and that a nuclear strike will be delivered? Could you begin by summing up this operation? Is it a success or, more likely, a failure?

💬 Sergey Lavrov: Unlike our Western colleagues, we are not chasing after the external effects. Nor do we regard the international actions we take as aimed at winning someone’s approval or achieving success, as you said. We are doing what we are forced to do. We are defending people and the Russian language, which has been exposed to direct discrimination and aggression by the Poroshenko and Zelensky regimes in Ukraine. We are defending Ukraine from nazification, which has persisted there for years, with the West’s direct connivance. The West did not care what was happening to the Russian language and education and the Russian media, which were simply outlawed. We have for years knocked on various doors in Europe and the United States, urging our Western colleagues to make Ukraine fulfil the commitments it has assumed under numerous European and international conventions. But the West was deaf to it, as it was deaf to the fact that Ukraine publicly refused to implement the UN Security Council resolution which endorsed the Minsk agreements, agreements signed by France and Germany. We have tried to convince the West for years that Ukraine should not be dragged into NATO. There have been five waves of NATO’s expansion as it is, with its military infrastructure brought closer to the Russian borders despite the promises that were given at the time when the USSR was breaking up. Dragging Ukraine into NATO meant creating a direct threat right on the border of the Russian Federation.

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Stephen Lendman

Here’s interventionist Blinken’s recitation of rubbish last week, vomiting one debunked Big Lie after another, saying: “(W)e worked very hard to try to keep (things) on a diplomatic track (and) dialogue (sic).” “Russia…reject(ed) diplomacy and dialogue and pursue(d) aggression (sic).”

Fact: For nearly 8 years, Russia went all-out diplomatically to halt US-orchestrated and directed aggression by Nazified Ukraine against Donbass — to no avail. It begs the question. Why didn’t Russia conclude sooner that pursuing diplomacy with US-dominated NATO and Kiev was a colossal waste of time? It achieved nothing positive since the Obama/Biden regime’s 2014 coup, replacing democratic rule in Ukraine with Nazified tyranny.

Fact: Russia intervened against Ukraine in response to pleas for help from the leadership of Donestk and Lugansk for military help against Kiev’s aggression.

Fact: Article 51 of the UN Charter affirms the right of self-defense for all nations under attack.

Fact: Russia responded militarily because years of its good faith diplomatic efforts were consistently rebuffed by hegemon USA, its NATO vassal states and colonized Ukraine.

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Michael Krieger

“I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another.” ~ Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

Despite an interest in geopolitics, I haven’t really written anything on the concerning and worsening tension between the government of the United States and the government of Russia. I intentionally wrote government twice in order to emphasize the fact that 99.9% of Americans do not have real grievances with actual Russian people, and vice versa. This is a high-level conflict between powerful “leaders” playing a game of Risk with average citizen as pawns. This is how it’s always been. As human beings, we should never lose sight of this so the mistakes we make in the future aren’t nearly as tragic as those made by our ancestors.

One disconcerting thing I have noticed amongst some “liberty-minded” people I follow, is a knee-jerk tendency to pick a side in this affair. When it comes to powerful men running centralized nation-states with nuclear weapons, there are no church boys involved. I have noticed a desire to defend Russia every step of the way in what appears to be a simple-minded emotional reflex birthed in justifiable disgust with what they see happening in their home nations (the U.S. and UK in particular).

This behavior has always made me uncomfortable, and reminds me very much of how people get upset with one fake political party and then vote for the other guy simply because they are not a Democrat or a Republican. The best choice is to accept they are both useless and not vigorously defend either party. I take the same tact when it comes to battles between nation-states. Just because I am disgusted and horrified with what is happening in these United States, doesn’t mean I need to slavishly defend Russia, Vladimir Putin or pick any sides in a conflict in which the primary losers will always be powerless civilians.

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Pepe Escobar

Are the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Russia on a mad spiral leading to yet another war in Europe? Is it inevitable? Far from it.

The US-propelled vassal currently starring in the oligarch dance in Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, last week advanced the proposition that Ukrainians in the near future, after his "reforms", will be asked to vote on whether to join NATO.

Let's be serious here. Many of you will be familiar with the concept of "shatter belt" - territories and peoples that historically have been squeezed between the Germanic Eagle and the Russian Bear.

As we stand, the whole shatter belt - apart from Ukraine and Belarus - has signed up to NATO. A new Berlin wall, this time US-built - from the Baltics to the Black Sea now runs through Kiev. Were Ukraine to become a NATO member in an albeit remote future, the shatter belt buffer zone would disappear. This means NATO - essentially the US - planted right on Russia's western border.

Washington has just announced that it will be pre-positioning more military vehicles in Europe to be used in exercises or "potential military operations". This is perfectly in tune with the relentless US Think Tankland spin that NATO and the US will be "forced" to balance their commitment to security in Eastern Europe against potential Russian "aggression".

As Ukraine, the Baltic states and Poland persist in compounded hysteria about such "aggression", the option of a post-MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) US-Russia nuclear war, terrifying as it must be, is now - casually - back on the discussion table. At least there's a countercurrent: strands of informed Americans are wondering why the US should be paying for Europe's defense when European GDP is larger than that of the US.

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Stephen Lendman

Repeated administration/Pentagon Big Lies claim otherwise. Saying only non-lethal aid supplied. Including communications equipment. Body armor. Night vision goggles. Humvees. Radar. Counter-mortar detection units. Binoculars. Small boats. Various other gear.

Kiev is infested with CIA, FBI, US special forces and various other so-called Washington advisors. Directly involved in aiding, abetting and directing Donbass fighting.

Pentagon spokesman Admiral John Kirby lied saying: "Nothing has changed about the non-lethal assistance that we continue to flow to Ukrainian armed forces and security forces." Washington "continue(s) to focus on non-lethal assistance…" - False! More on this below.

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