After his April 15 meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held a press conference at which he responded to a myriad of questions on different topics. Most significantly, he characterized Russia’s and China’s common view of the nature of the two countries’ relationship at this point in time, when the post-war structures developed to avoid wars and conflict have failed miserably.
“At the international level, we are interested in foiling the open attempts by the West, including the United States and Europe, to maintain or even renew their hegemony, in the hope that the 500-year-long experience of controlling the world, subordinating it to their interests, and creating global control mechanisms that allowed them to live off others, in particular through slave trade, colonialism and other instruments, could be modernized and further used to continue living off others and bend them to their will,” he said. “Neither China nor Russia, nor the majority of countries throughout the world, can accept this approach.”
“We talked about the situation in various parts of the world, focusing on Eurasia where more seats of tensions are developing. In Europe, NATO has been trying to find a new meaning for its continued existence, primarily by incorporating Ukraine. We are watching the EU’s militarization against the backdrop of crises within NATO over differences between Washington and European capitals, primarily the Brussels bureaucracy.”
