Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s comment for the Belarusian media following talks with President of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, Minsk, June 30, 2022

President of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko received us at the start of our official visit to the Republic of Belarus devoted to the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations between our countries.

We had a lengthy, trust-based and useful conversation, during which we discussed ways of further enhancing our integration agenda within the Union State based on the principled agreements between the presidents of our countries.

Alexander Lukashenko and Vladimir Putin have met recently in St Petersburg. They carried out a 360-degree review of the 28 Union State programmes approved a year ago. According to our estimates, 40 percent of them have been implemented in terms of finding practical solutions. These programmes are beginning to benefit the economy, the social sector, transport, logistics and deliver everything we need for our states to function properly and to ensure the interests of the people of Russia and Belarus.

We agreed to harmonise laws and the rights our citizens enjoy in several other areas. This will make everyday life easier for people in both countries. Foreign policy and security issues were the second major item on the agenda of the two presidents when they met in St Petersburg. They had a detailed discussion on this topic, emphasising that Russia and Belarus will take a firm stand to ensure that their security interests are respected as NATO continues to act quite aggressively. We always seek dialogue and support decisions ensuring equality and a balance of interests. We are aware of the attitude our NATO colleagues have towards agreements of this kind. In the late 1990s and in 2010, all members of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe reaffirmed their commitment to the principle of indivisible security on several occasions, saying that no one should seek to reinforce its security at the expense of the security of others.

From then on, we have been insisting at the highest level that they walk the talk to fulfil their commitments. Instead, NATO carried out five expansion waves all while proclaiming that it is a defensive alliance, so no need to worry. Defensive from whom? At the time of the Warsaw Pact, the situation was clear. There was NATO and the Warsaw Treaty Organisation, while the Berlin Wall served as an imaginary wall separating the two military and political blocks. The Warsaw Pact does not exist anymore, while the North Atlantic Treaty continued its eastward expansion, creating a new line of defence, if we are to believe what they say. These statements and logic are obviously absurd. Today, after yet another NATO summit in Madrid, US representatives keep saying that the alliance has a defensive role, has played no other role in the past and will always stick to it in the future. I have already mentioned the extent to which it can be viewed as a defensive alliance. Suffice to remind you of the way it ‘defended’ itself in Iraq and Libya when it destroyed these countries, as well as how it devastated Yugoslavia in 1999 – this was the first time NATO countries, which are also part of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, bombed another OSCE member state. In all these cases, the security interests of the NATO countries were not at stake. Still, they believed that they had the right to defend themselves this way.

All these years we tried to persuade NATO to abide by its commitments not to reinforce its security at the expense of the security of others, and to refrain from expanding eastwards. But what did they do? They kept supplying more and more weapons to Ukraine and encouraging neo-Nazi sentiment, theories and practices which have taken root in Ukraine. They supported the coup d’etat and the effort to sabotage the Minsk agreements. By the way, it was here, in this building, that these documents were signed. I remember very well President Petr Poroshenko at these talks. He has said recently that no one ever thought of implementing the Minsk agreements in Ukraine. This was a manoeuvre undertaken with for the sole purpose of winning some time in order to rearm the military to take their revenge. He said so in public and did not even blush.

The West understood all this very well. The fact that we decided to stand firm for our interests did not come as a surprise for them when we exhausted all opportunities to hold equal talks and balance our positions instead of seeing the West impose its agenda to the detriment of Russia’s and Belarus’ interests.

Judging by their hysterical response, we can see that this problem has been festering for too long. The West nurtured high hopes of turning Ukraine into a constant irritant, a tool for containing Russia and promoting Russophobia, destroying and cancelling everything Russian. The West has been so agitated in its response because its plans will never materialise. We will not let them fulfil their plans which clearly contradict international law and all OSCE values, as they like to say in the West, including ethnic minority rights – Ukraine has flagrantly violated them many times with the acquiescence of our Western colleagues.

We share the views of the Republic of Belarus. We reject the Western policy line of dictating its will, ultimatums and imposing its agenda, as well as using illegitimate, illegal sanctions in violation of the UN Charter, and committing many other acts that our US-led Western colleagues try to impose (since the US dominates the West and the Europeans obey Washington in everything) in order to substitute universal international law with some kind of ‘rules’ they concocted within their narrow circle. This is the philosophical part of our conversation, but this worldview has a direct bearing on actual policy-making.

We discussed plans to develop our bilateral intergovernmental and inter-parliamentary contacts. The traditional inter-regional forum is about to kick off in Grodno. We will expand our consular presence in Belarus by opening Russia’s Consulate General in Grodno. Our Belarusian friends will also transform the branches of their embassies in several Russian cities to give them the status of consulate general. There were other practical plans on our agenda today too. We reaffirmed our commitment to coordinating our international efforts. We follow a single coordinated foreign policy as set forth in the programmes we adopt every two years.

Question: During the meeting, you said that building a European security model would be impossible without Belarus and Russia. Is the West beginning to wake up to this fact? Will they be ready to engage in equal dialogue one day?

Sergey Lavrov: In this context, some reasonable voices have been piercing the Russophobic chorus, with calls to keep in mind that one day they will have to resume dialogue and cooperation. We are ready and we never avoid any contacts. However, we know what the obligations the West assumes are worth, considering the bitter experience with all the lies we have witnessed over the past 30 years, related to European security. We are always open to dialogue. So let us hear what the West has to offer.