Russia’s foreign minister has said the United States is preventing Kyiv from agreeing to Russia’s demands. “It is constantly felt that the Ukrainian delegation is being held by the hand, most likely by the Americans, which does not allow them to agree to the demands, which I consider to be absolutely minimal,” Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.
“Russia has lost the illusion that it will ever rely on the West and will never accept a US-dominated world order,” Reuters quoted Sergei Lavrov as saying on RT.
According to Lavrov, the United States is behaving like “a sheriff who tries to command everyone in the bar.”
Western countries have imposed large-scale sanctions against Russia’s financial and corporate sectors in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, plunging Russia’s economy into the worst crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, according to Reuters.
Lavrov, President Vladimir Putin’s foreign minister since 2004, said the West’s response to what Moscow called a “special military operation” showed that the West was completely dominated by the United States and the European Union largely powerless.
“If there were any illusions that one day we will be able to rely on our Western partners, these illusions are no more,” Lavrov said in an interview with Russian state television in English. “Now Russia will look to the East,” he added.