Lavrov denies that Russia lost Cold War, laments that people hold old grudges.
Disclaimer:
I think that RT is not a trustworthy source, because their modus operandi is "lie-by-omission" by leaving out facts until the story fits the narrative. However, if you are careful, you can still use RT in some cases.
https://www.rt.com/news/396228-lavrov-a%D1%81cuses-us-eu-ukraine-crisis/
In the early 1990s, “the US and its allies decided to pronounce themselves winners in the Cold War and refused to cooperate on creating equal and undivided security, having instead chosen to move dividing lines closer to Russia's borders,” Lavrov said Thursday, speaking at the ‘Russia & the EU in a changing world’ conference in Berlin.
This policy was realized both through expansion of NATO and through an EU program called ‘The Eastern Partnership’ (EaP), the minister explained, saying that countries in the Eastern Europe were forced to make a choice either to support Russia or the West.
“The largely-provoked-from-the-outside Ukrainian crisis has become the direct consequence of such shortsighted policy of Washington and Brussels,” Lavrov said.
Having discarded the idea of a multipolar world and chosen to act in its own interests, “the elite of the Western world have been pursuing the policy to politically and economically contain Russia.”
...
“We will not engage in talks on some conditions of lifting of sanctions,” Lavrov said. He added that “it's not in Russians’ character to hold grudges against anyone, so if and when the EU recognizes the importance of getting back to normal relations with Russia,” Moscow will not refuse to cooperate.
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Let's recap:
- According to Lavrov, just because the Soviet Union collapsed and Communism has been wiped out in Eastern Europe, that DOES NOT mean that the Soviet Union has lost the Cold War.
- The soviet Union used to be an international alliance of countries, before Russia turned it into a russian empire. Russia was all for a unipolar world. Then their powerbloc lost the contest for who gets to be king of this unipolar world and all of a sudden Russia is demanding a multipolar world.
- I agree with Lavrov that Ukraine's collapse is a result of geopolitical circumstance, but Ukraine has always been culturally split into a Europe-loving western half and a Russia-loving eastern half. There has always been a cultural fault-line in Ukraine and the country broke apart exactly along this fault-line.
- "It's not in Russians' character to hold grudges." That's why Russia's biggest holiday is their WWII-victory, that's why Russia refuses to return the art they looted from Germany, that why Russia still brings up the horrible shit the US did during the Cold War and that's why Lavrov totally doesn't care who did or didn't win the Cold War.
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