Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s answers to media questions following a visit to the Republic of Belarus, Minsk, October 26, 2023

Question: Minsk is hosting a high-level international conference, Eurasian Security: Reality and Prospects in a Transforming World. This issue is important, but how practical is it? Minsk and Moscow talk a lot and invite others to join the talks, but this does not seem to inspire enthusiasm in the West.

Sergey Lavrov: We proceed from the premise that Eurasia is a “fact of nature.” It exists.

It is a major continent rich in natural resources that holds much promise. Strategic, transport, and other supply lines go through it or can go through it. There are many of them, such as the North-South and East-West routes, but to fully utilise the advantages of Eurasia, new transport corridors must be created. All of this makes it imperative for all normal countries to unite their efforts.

If our Western colleagues, who occupy a quarter of Eurasia, believe that it is not in their interest, but rather their interest lies in spending money on providing weapons to the Kiev regime, incurring enormous economic losses, facing deindustrialisation, allowing the United States to become the absolute leader, and losing the most from the war in Ukraine (which they initiated), we cannot do anything about it. This does not mean, though, that everyone else should wait for them to come to their senses. This is why we have long been promoting Eurasian cooperation in various formats such as the CSTO, the CIS, the SCO, and ASEAN. Contacts have been established between these entities, including in the form of signed memorandums at the level of executive secretaries.

We proceed from the fact that when and if our Western colleagues, our neighbours on the continent, decide to reclaim their common sense, stop playing their ideology-driven and confrontational schemes imposed on them by the Americans and a few other aggressive neighbours (yours and ours), refuse to be subservient to Washington in everything and start acting like independent states and thinking about their national interests, we will not slam the door in their faces. However, the terms of our interactions will be determined by mutual benefit, not their wishes.

I believe the conference is taking place at a good time. It will give a boost to discussing these issues in a substantive way at all existing organisations in this space, including the Union State, the CIS, the CSTO, the SCO, ASEAN, and our other neighbours who are not yet part of these organisations. I see this as a useful process of sharing experiences between all these associations and coordinating projects that will ensure the complementarity of the organisations. It’s division of labour in the best sense of the word.

Question: NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has stated that the alliance needs large production capacities and a lot of weapons to ensure peace and freedom. Your reaction?

Sergey Lavrov: There is a Telegram channel called Krokodil (Crocodile). It reposts caricatures from Soviet times and the Cold War era.

When I was a child, I enjoyed them. Sometimes I wondered why they depicted imperialists in such an unflattering way. It’s as if they were bloodthirsty, worse than the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. But now, when I hear statements from some leaders of NATO and other Western organisations, I remember these caricatures.

This alliance has declared itself responsible for global security. It repackaged itself in a matter of minutes. They first stated that it was a defensive alliance, and their only goal was to protect the territories of their member states. But at the last two summits in Madrid and Vilnius, they explicitly proclaimed NATO’s global responsibility for global security, including in the Asia-Pacific region, which they call the Indo-Pacific region.

They don’t hide the fact that they need to be responsible for security in Asia in order to contain China and isolate Russia. Such bloodthirsty plans have never led to anything good. There were Napoleon and Hitler. In ancient times, there were also people who wanted to subjugate the whole world. The fate was the same for all.

Question: What is the main condition for reducing the level of confrontation in the region?

Sergey Lavrov: Right now, the most important thing is not to  lose vigilance. We are facing a war that has been declared on us, and we must not allow ourselves to be defeated. Their goal is to achieve a “strategic defeat” of Russia “on the battlefield.” Yet, from time to time, they accuse us of avoiding negotiations. We are not avoiding them.

Recently, former Chancellor of Germany Gerhard Schroeder gave a lengthy interview. He explained how a document was drafted in March-April 2022 that would have allowed for the resolution of the military confrontation based on security guarantees for Russia and Ukraine. These guarantees did not include Ukraine joining NATO. The Kiev regime, realistically assessing the prospects of continued hostilities, was prepared to sign the document, but was prohibited from doing so by Washington and London. They accuse us of being against negotiations, but that is a lie.

We are aware of the fact that the West continues to incite the Kiev regime to continue the war. When it comes to talks, let President Zelensky rescind the decree he signed a year ago, which prohibited him and other officials from negotiating with the government of Vladimir Putin.

All of this is hypocrisy, which is expressed in empty words about the talks that Russia is allegedly avoiding. We have never avoided serious offers. Such offers simply do not come our way. In April 2022, the Anglo-Saxons thwarted the talks. Since it is about “the battlefield,” let us keep it on the battlefield. This will continue. The truth is on our side.

After the 2014 coup and the signing of the Minsk agreements, which were sabotaged by the leadership of Ukraine, as well as by France and Germany, who acted as guarantors of the signed agreements, everything Russian in Ukraine was subjected to destruction and eradication during many years.

The Russian language, culture, education, and cultural contacts were destroyed. In Nazi Germany, books were burned, and in Ukraine, millions of books in the Russian language (regardless of the author) were pulled out of libraries, destroyed, or sent for recycling. Education, media, and cultural exchanges were being wiped out.

Everything that reminded the people of our shared history, the historical period when Novorossiya was developed by the Russians under the Russian Empire, Catherine the Great and Grigory Potemkin, was destroyed. Monuments to them and to those who liberated this land from the Nazis are torn down. In September 2021, Zelensky stated in an interview that if people who live in Ukraine feel connected to Russian culture, then, for the sake of their children and grandchildren, they should just beat it and go to Russia. This is how the President of Ukraine, who is praised by the West as the chief democrat and the hope of all Europe, treated and continues to treat his citizens and multilingualism in his country, as well as those who were either ethnic Russians or who found it more comfortable to use the Russian language in full conformity with the Ukrainian Constitution. We could not tolerate such insults to Russian people. We will not put up with a situation where opportunities for such insults remain.

Question: Yesterday, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said that we had received written proposals from the United States to restart the dialogue on strategic stability. In the current circumstances, do we think that the arms control dialogue can be resumed in the foreseeable future?

Sergey Lavrov: We have commented on the situation many times. Strategic stability implies the existence of conditions that allow for the achievement of agreements that equally reflect the interests and address the concerns of the participants in such negotiations. This is exactly how the New START Treaty, which is still in force, was structured. All of its caps remain in force.

We suspended the inspection process, while remaining committed to every obligation we undertook when we signed this treaty. Inspections are a measure of mutual trust. There is no trust left between us and the United States. They have destroyed it, undermining all the principles set out in the preamble such as indivisible security, respect for each other’s security concerns, mutual trust, etc. All the principles on which the treaty is based have been flagrantly violated by the Americans.

In addition, there are practical considerations. Inspections are carried out at facilities related to storing nuclear weapons. When the Kiev regime uses Western weapons to attack the bases of our strategic bombers on Russian territory (which happened not too long ago), more questions arise about why the Americans needed to rush to inspect our facilities right at this moment. Perhaps it is to allow the Nazi regime to target our bases more precisely? So, we have suspended inspections. As long as the treaty is in force, we are committed to its parameters, which we signed.

Question: Has information been verified that the recent US tests in Nevada comply with the CTBT Treaty [the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty]?

Sergey Lavrov: They said it was a chemical explosion which is not prohibited by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and which they explained they needed to improve their system of overseeing compliance with the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. We continue to examine the facts. So far, we have not found anything that points to a violation of this treaty.

Question: The conference that kicked off in Minsk today looks as if Belarus is trying to build bridges between Europe and Asia. What do you think has motivated Belarus to do this right now, considering that after the beginning of the special military operation in Ukraine similar attempts, including those by Minsk, have been – I would not say abandoned, rather put on hold for some time? 

Sergey Lavrov:  I would not say that the conference should look back one way or the other at the part of Eurasia called Europe. Bridges to Europe do exist but they either have blown them up like the Nord Stream pipelines or blocked the passage to them by roadway gates and installed walls of concrete, figuratively speaking. But they are making a fence of some sort of netting along the border between the Baltic States and Belarus, and Finland plans to build something on the border with us.

There is no need for “bridges” to Europe. When the time is appropriate – and there is no evidence of that so far – then we will have to blow up the walls rather than build bridges. So far, these people have been convincing themselves that what is happening now is useful for them. I mean that they have been drawn into the war against Russia through Ukraine, with money, weapons and many other things being pumped out of them to support the Nazi regime in Kiev. While this is happening, the rest of Eurasia is unwilling to wait for the end to this self-deceptiveness campaign, which the United States has unleashed and is inciting.

The United States only gains from Europe growing poorer right before its eyes and from the deindustrialisation taking place there. While all this is happening, normal countries that are not seeking hegemony through wars against other countries would rather engage in cooperation, something we are doing now.

The Asian part of Eurasia that comprises the territory of the Union State of Belarus and Russia, in the context of the development prospects for the SCO, the CIS and the EAEU that are associated with China’s Belt&Road project, has plenty of promising and mutually beneficial areas to invest our natural, human and technological resources. It can develop in such a way as to not depend on the whims of a minority on the left-hand side of our common continent, let alone those people overseas who are trying to increase tensions and pose as masters of the universe. The United States provides daily evidence of its aspiration for hegemony and intolerance of cooperation where partners enjoy equal rights. They in the United States do not mince words saying that those who are not blinded by their own magnificence are trying to build relations on mutual respect, the search for a balance of interests and mutually beneficial projects.  

This is precisely what the conference, which is taking place in Minsk today, on the initiative of the President of the Republic of Belarus, is about. It will run for another couple of days. This is precisely what the conference participants spoke about today. We need to build a security and economic cooperation architecture that does not depend on the whims and neocolonial instincts of our neighbours in the West of our huge continent. If they are depriving themselves of natural competitive advantages that the combining of efforts in the Eurasian space can offer, it is their choice.