The West is becoming increasingly divided as its power wanes, the Russian foreign minister has said<\/p>\n
The US is trying to shift the burden of \u201ccontaining Russia\u201d onto European NATO members, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.
\nSpeaking during a visit to China on Wednesday, Lavrov blamed the EU and UK for \u201ctorpedoing\u201d US-Russian talks aimed at normalizing diplomatic ties and criticized large-scale European rearmament programs.
\n\u201cEuropean elites see militarization as a guarantee of their survival. And Americans encourage this European militarization as it shifts responsibility for security of the Old World,\u201d he said.
\nWashington is content for European states to bankroll Kiev against Moscow and even create a new military bloc involving Ukraine, as this places \u201cthe main responsibility [on them] for containing Russia,\u201d Lavrov said.
\nAccording to the diplomat, the broader Western agenda is to \u201cpreserve and renew their hegemony\u201d and put in place new tools to make sure they \u201clive at the expense of others\u201d \u2013 as slavery and colonialism did in the past. But as their relative power declines, internal frictions in the West intensify, he said.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
The Iranian knot needs to be untangled, not cut \u2013 Lavrov<\/p>\n
Lavrov criticized the EU for prioritizing ideology over economic pragmatism by refusing Russian energy supplies despite a global price shock caused by the US war on Iran.
\n\u201cEurope says it is getting off the needle of Russian oil and gas. And it risks getting impaled by an aspen stake, which [the US] is actively sharpening for the Europeans,\u201d he said.
\nThe top Russian diplomat stated that officials in Brussels, Paris, Berlin, and London are making efforts to prolong the Ukraine conflict and keep the US involved in it. They have largely nullified the outcome of US-Russian negotiations in Alaska last year, even as President Donald Trump has moved away from his predecessor\u2019s policy of open-ended support for Kiev, Lavrov said.
\nMoscow has no illusions about the fact that the US pursues dominance over global energy markets, including through recent military operations against Venezuela and Iran and the continuation of sanctions on Russia, the minister concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The West is becoming increasingly divided as its power wanes, the Russian foreign minister has said The US is trying to shift the burden of \u201ccontaining Russia\u201d onto European NATO…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t