Russia will focus its foreign policy on trying to end the "West's monopoly" in international affairs, the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, said on Wednesday. During a speech before the Duma (Lower House of Parliament), he assured that it was Western actions that led to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
The Russian Foreign Minister assured that Russia's foreign policy will be based on the need to end the Western monopoly, which is driven by "selfish" interests and does not take into account the balance of interests between countries.
Russian state media reported last week that Russian President Vladimir Putin is going to approve a new foreign policy vision. The move would come amid Russia's military intervention in Ukraine, and with Moscow putting up with Western sanctions. Relations between Russia and the West have currently reached their lowest historical level.
"In our updated foreign policy concept, we will talk about the need to put an end to the West's monopoly on the formation of the framework of international life," Lavrov said in his speech before the deputies.
The minister is sure that the US and its allies want to "revive the neocolonial unipolar world order, hinder the objective process of formation and development of new world centers", in order to "collect a real tribute to humanity and extract a hegemonic rent".
This argument is not new, and it was already presented by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in September of last year.
Lavrov stated in his speech that the framework for international coexistence must be based from now on "not on the selfish interests" of the West, "but on the universal foundation of a balance of interests, as requested by the UN Charter, which enshrined the principle of the sovereign equality of all states".
According to the minister, the Western states have adhered for many years to the idea of "containing Russia", which has materialized in the expansion of NATO towards the Russian borders and in "the transformation of a fraternal Ukraine into a Ukraine anti-Russia, in a Russophobic military bridgehead".
This line of "Washington and its European satellites" has reached a point of no return in recent years," Lavrov said. According to him, they want to "set Russia back decades or disrupt the country's development," even preparing its "collapse ".
Lavrov added that the Western states act as "guardians" of the Ukrainian authorities and that in recent years "they have pushed them towards a military solution to the problem of Donbass."
"Today, the United States and its satellites are carrying out an all-out hybrid war against us that has been prepared for many years, using the Ukrainian national radicals as a battering ram," he added. And he insisted that the Western objective is to "impose a sanitary cordon" on Russia to turn it "into a kind of pariah country."
