West Seeks a ‘Lasting Strategic Defeat’ of Russia in Ukraine, Says Lavrov

Feb. 2, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—In his wide-ranging interview with TV host Dmitry Kiselyov for Rossiya-24 TV and RIA Novosti today, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (in Russian) warned that the West seeks to make Russia suffer “a lasting strategic defeat” in Ukraine. “What is it if not racism, Nazism, and an attempt to find a solution to ‘the Russian question?’ ” he asked. With their unending sanctions, he continued, Western nations hope to cripple Russia completely, to bring a “decade of regression,” as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen bluntly put it.

“We are in the center of a geopolitical battle. There is no doubt about it,” Lavrov said. Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine are “heroes” whose “deeds are for the future of mankind, in which there will be no conditions for full U.S. hegemony,” said Lavrov, in the hour and 20 minute interview.

He affirmed that, naturally, everyone wants the Ukraine conflict to end. The key, however, is not the timing, but a “quality end-result that we can secure for our nations, for those people who want to remain part of Russian culture and who have for years been deprived of all things Russia by the Kiev junta with Western connivance. At this point, we are acting based on the principle proclaimed by our Western colleagues: victory should be won on the battlefield. This is their clear formula, and they were the ones who refused to negotiate.”

Lavrov’s discussion of Russian-Chinese relations was instructive. Relations are as strong as ever, he said, with “no restrictions, no limits, and no issues banned for discussion.” Both Moscow and Beijing simply want to pursue national development “within the framework of existing norms of international trade.”

And, he emphasized, “China beats America on its own turf under its own rules.” That is why the U.S. “is reneging on the economic principles that it spread across the world and benefited from in the past.” But, as Moscow sees it, the current form of globalization “no longer has positive traits,” Lavrov said, adding that “we realized it sooner because we were the first to take a punch.” Russia had “less immersion” than China in the U.S.-influenced global financial system and other mechanisms, which Washington now abuses, he explained.

Lavrov predicted that it will take China some time to reduce its involvement with those mechanisms and create alternative tools to defend its interests, but it is moving in that direction.