RUSSIA will determine the future prospects of interaction with Western countries on its own terms, when and if their leadership sobers up, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday.
‘When and if they sober up, we will determine our position on the prospects for further relations with them.
‘But of course, we will be deciding ourselves and on our own terms,’ Lavrov told a meeting of the board of guardians of the Alexander Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Fund.
Lavrov added: ‘Despite the dirty campaign to cancel everything connected with Russia, we still have many friends in every country in the world, including in the West.
‘We know that they like our multinational country, love Russian culture, and share the traditional moral and family values we promote.’
Moscow and Minsk keep getting stronger and are capable of handling the most difficult challenges, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said on Monday.
At a meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Union State of Russia and Belarus, Mishustin said: ‘Together we are stronger and capable of handling the most difficult challenges and achieving the goals that we have set in various fields, from ensuring security to improving the welfare of our people.
‘And, of course, resisting external pressure. The deepening of Russian-Belarusian integration is our response to it. This is the mission that our presidents – Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko – have set for us.’
Mishustin greeted Belarusian Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko and conveyed the Russian president’s best wishes to him.
The Russian Prime Minister added: ‘We are meeting ahead of an important event. At the end of the week, on April 2nd, we will celebrate the Day of Unity of the Peoples of Russia and Belarus.
‘The treaty on creating a community of our nations was signed on that day more than a quarter-century ago, opening a new chapter in our common history and setting the stage for building integrative structures within the Union State.’
According to Mishustin, today, ‘it is safe to say that the decision to establish it (the Union State) was the correct one and has vindicated itself.’
Separately, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev said the United States is trying to preserve its supremacy in the world, so it is trying to suppress Russia after which it will set its sights on China,
He warned in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta: ‘Since at least 1945, the source of any escalation of tensions on a global scale has been the unrestrained desire of the US authorities to maintain their dominant role in the world.
‘As they believe, two great powers, Russia and China, are now preventing them from doing so.’
Russia ‘irritates’ the United States he said, ‘by the fact that it is not just pursuing its own independent policy of strengthening the multipolar world, but also that this policy is in many ways superior to the US’ from a spiritual and moral perspective, as well as in military respects.
‘China, on the other hand, is a major economic competitor of the United States … Following attempts to suppress Russia, Washington will take on China,’ Patrushev warned.
He recalled that ‘specific measures for the destruction of the USSR were approved 75 years ago by the famous directive of the US National Security Council “Objectives With Respect to Russia”.
‘With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West was euphoric. It didn’t last long, however, because Russia has worked to correct its mistakes,’ the security chief went on.
‘Today, our country can ensure not only domestic stability, but also the security of its people from outside threats.’
- The West is trying its best to ‘whitewash’ and paper over the topic of the Nord Stream explosions, but Moscow will continue to oppose such attempts, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday.
‘Western countries are making every effort to “whitewash” this topic, to paper it over, so that it disappears from the agenda. But, of course, Russia will continue to do everything possible to prevent this from happening,’ he said.
Peskov also mentioned the possibility of demanding compensation for Nord Stream.
He said: ‘If we are talking about, let’s say, sabotage by one or more state actors – and, thus far, the data indicates that such a large-scale act of sabotage and terrorism on a critically important piece of infrastructure could not have been committed without the involvement of state actors and special state services with all the potential they can deploy – in this case, of course, that would be an entirely justified question.’
The Kremlin spokesman added that for now this is only a hypothetical discussion. He noted that first it is necessary to identify the person or persons responsible for the attacks.
Nord Stream served as one of the main routes for gas supplies from Russia to Europe. Due to difficulties with maintenance of turbines amid anti-Russian sanctions, it had recently been used only partially. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline was completed but never put into operation, also due to anti-Russian sanctions.
On September 27, 2022, Nord Stream AG reported unprecedented damage that occurred the day before on three strings of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 offshore gas pipelines.
On September 26, 2022, Swedish seismologists registered two explosions on the pipeline routes. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office has opened a criminal case based on charges of international terrorism.
Meanwhile, it is critically important to determine what kind of object was found next to the Nord Stream 2 pipe, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters last Friday.
He said: ‘It is positive news when the owner of the pipe has been invited to take very important actions as part of the investigation, because the discovered object is located next to the pipe seam.
‘The seam, as you know, is the most vulnerable section of the pipeline, and the explosion also occurred at the seam.
‘Therefore, it is very important and critical to determine what kind of object it is, whether it is related to the terrorist attack, and apparently it is, and continue the investigation.
‘The investigation must be transparent, inclusive in terms of the participation of all interested parties there,’ he stressed.
Peskov said it is necessary to take a ‘wait and see’ approach to determine what is ‘behind the invitation of the Danish Energy Agency.’
Earlier, the Danish Energy Agency (DAE) invited the operator of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to participate in the effort to lift an unknown object discovered near the pipe from the seabed.
The DAE said it was waiting for a response from Nord Stream 2 AG before the operation commenced.
On March 14, President Vladimir Putin said that a Gazprom ship had found evidence that could mean there’s another explosive device on a Nord Stream pipeline 30 kilometres from the site of the previous terrorist attack.
Putin also said that Gazprom had previously received permission from Denmark to examine the site of the explosion at the Nord Stream undersea natural gas pipeline, but the ship that the company hired went further along the pipeline.
According to him, ‘a little stake was found, which was placed at a location that’s similar to where the blast took place.’ He explained that he was referring to pipe junctions, the most vulnerable spots of any gas pipeline.
Specialists believe it might be an antenna to receive a signal to detonate an explosive device that could have been planted under the pipeline system.
According to the Russian president, ‘it appears that several explosive devices were planted’ along the Nord Stream. ‘Some of them went off, and some didn’t. The reasons are unclear,’ Putin added.
- Mercenaries fighting on the Ukrainian side communicate in English, German, Spanish, Polish and Arabic, says Russian State Duma legislator Sergey Sokol, who takes part in the special military operation.
‘(Conversations are intercepted in Donbass) in English, German, sometimes in Spanish, often in Polish, and even in Arabic,’ Sokol told TASS on Monday.
He noted that when captured, foreign mercenaries often change their tune about taking part in the conflict and complain about conditions on the front lines.
‘It seems that they expected this to be just military tourism: to come, hang out, show off, get some money, and then leave. It turns out everything is much more serious for them than they imagine,’ Sokol stressed.
The presence of foreign mercenaries in the Ukrainian army has been reported since last spring, with Polish mercenaries being mentioned most often.