Lavrov Warns That U.S.-Russian Relations Are Worse Than the Cold War and Heading Downhill

April 29 , 2021 (EIRNS)—Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov gave a lengthy interview yesterday to Dmitry Kiselev, the Director General of the government-owned news agency Rossiya Segodnya—the parent company of RIA Novosti and Sputnik—in which he reviewed many aspects of Russian foreign policy, focusing in on the dangerous state of U.S.-Russian affairs. The translated interview is posted to the Foreign Ministry’s website. He repeated President Putin’s warning from his April 21 Federal Assembly speech: “We will harshly respond to any attempts to cross the red line, which we ourselves will determine.” Asked by Kiselev if matters today are not worse than they were during the Cold War, and how Russia will respond if provocations continue from the West, Lavrov stated:

“This means that we will be living in conditions of a Cold War, or even worse, as you have already mentioned. In my opinion, tension did run high during the Cold War and there were numerous high-risk conflict situations, but there was also mutual respect. I believe that this is lacking now.”

Lavrov observed that the worsening of relations began under Obama, continued under Trump, and now “we can see that the Biden administration continues to go downhill.”

Among the other topics addressed by Lavrov were: prospects for a Biden-Putin meeting; the role of the British in provoking conflict with Russia; the talk of further financial warfare against Russia, including expulsion from the SWIFT system; Ukraine; and more.