Russia’s objectives in Ukraine are non-negotiable and existential, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov explained on Wednesday at an annual meeting with domestic non-governmental organizations and nonprofits.
“We can’t and won’t ever give up the goals that were announced as part of the special military operation,” Lavrov said, adding that Moscow had warned for years against setting up Ukraine as a direct military threat on Russia’s doorstep. “There were plans to create military bases on the Sea of Azov and in Crimea. The regime that had proven its neo-Nazi essence more than once was constantly encouraged to exterminate everything Russian: culture, education, the media, and the Russians themselves, in those lands where their glorious ancestors lived and built cities for centuries.”
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The West can spend their days debating the effectiveness of Ukraine’s “offensive,” how far along their goal of “liberating their territory up to 1991 borders” is and how Russia is thwarting that, Lavrov added.
While debunking the claims of the Western propaganda machine may look like a Sisyphean labor, the world is already changing, Lavrov told the conference.
“We see the growth of self-awareness, a sense of one’s own identity and the desire to defend it, in the countries of Eurasia, in the Asia-Pacific region, in the Middle East, in Africa, in Latin America. The process of forming a multipolar world is unstoppable,” he said.
“This must be acknowledged. I understand that it is difficult for the West to do so,” he added. “But if they want to artificially slow down the objective historical process, then it only raises the price humanity – including the West – will pay for justice.”
Russia’s top diplomat pointed out that there is no democracy within NATO, only peer pressure under the mask of unanimity. The EU has likewise abandoned consensus and seeks to coerce members such as Hungary and Poland, who object to the trampling of national values and traditions.
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“There are no such ‘rules’ in associations where we participate and which we develop as priorities,” Lavrov noted, specifically naming the CSTO, the Eurasian Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS, among others.