The US and its allies will cause more trouble in the future as they cling to a unipolar world that allows them to exploit other nations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has predicted.
Current Western foreign policy “is aimed at slowing down the progress of history” and will “result in new confrontations, new difficulties for the international community,” the senior Russian official warned in an address on Friday. It will be “up to diplomats to untangle those situations.”
Lavrov was speaking to students at MGIMO, a leading Russian university from which the Foreign Ministry recruits many of its employees. He was briefing the audience on the current state of world affairs and what the students in attendance can expect working in the Russian diplomatic corps.
The minister reiterated Moscow’s position that Western nations are a major source of instability, claiming that “they want to literally rule the world, to impose their unipolar world order … to continue extracting tribute from humanity.”
Many other nations, including Russia, are opposing that and seek a more just multipolar world order, the transition to which is inevitable sooner or later, Lavrov said. Western nations are “creating obstacles” to that, but as they do so they undermine their own power, he argued.
“It’s not that we want to ruin the dollar. The US is no longer making sure that it can serve the role that used to be suitable for everyone,” he explained.
Washington’s use of financial sanctions makes the dollar unreliable as a world reserve currency, so naturally many are moving away from it, the minister said.
Russia has successfully resisted Western pressure so far and does not expect relations to improve anytime soon, the top diplomat noted. Even if the other side were to seek an improvement, Russia would not compromise any aspect of its security by relying on the US and its allies, he maintained. Western nations have repeatedly demonstrated their duplicity, Lavrov said.
“No principal agreement sealed [by Russia] with the West since 1991 was executed, not one,” he stressed.
Lavrov rejected the notion that Moscow was somehow “isolated” in the current standoff. Nations representing some 80% of the world population did not support sanctions on Russia, and dismissing the opinion of those people as irrelevant is deeply insulting, he said.