In a statement posted today to the Russian Foreign Ministry website, spokeswoman Maria Zakharova asserted that in orchestrating yesterday’s vote at the Organization of American States’ Permanent Council expelling Russia as a Permanent Observer in that body, NATO-affiliated members of the OAS, the U.S. and Canada, sought to “disrupt these countries’ historically good relations with Russia which are steeped in friendship, mutually respectful dialogue and mutually beneficial cooperation.” She pointed out that the three largest Ibero-American nations, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, did not back the expulsion resolution, and were backed by five other nations, including Bolivia, El Salvador and Honduras.
The Foreign Ministry spokeswoman made a point of emphasizing that under current OAS Secretary-General, unapologetic State Department toady Luis Almagro, interaction between Russia and Ibero-American nations has been substantially reduced. In fact, she said, under Almagro the OAS “began to regain the features of the notorious U.S. Department for the Colonies, despite the Ibero-Americans’ efforts to pursue an independent policy within the OAS that would meet the interests of the states south of the Rio Grande.” No longer is the OAS recognized as a “universal regional organization for the Western hemisphere countries,” Zakharova declared. Cuba left in 1962 and has never returned; Nicaragua is in the process of withdrawing, and Venezuela’s legitimate government has been replaced by “an impostor"—Juan Guaidó—"who proclaimed himself the president of that country.”
