MOSCOW, July 28 (RIA Novosti) – The United States has been consistently making efforts to impede the integration processes in the post-Soviet space, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Rossiya Segodnya International News Agency Monday.
"The consistency of US policy on preventing the integration in the post-Soviet space is really impressive. It remains a US foreign policy constant regardless of any changes in the administration," the Russian diplomat said.
"We have been using the expression ‘double standards’ in regard of US policy rather often during recent years,” Ryabkov added.
"But by analyzing the current events in Ukraine and the trend around it, I came to a conclusion that there are no double standards in the US policy at all. There is a single standard of not letting by any means the post-Soviet space to be consolidated, of disturbing the people living in different parts of this vast region, the people who somehow feel their spiritual, historical, personal ties with Russia ... of imposing a government which is politically and ideologically alien to them," the diplomat said.
The US policy toward pro-Western countries is quite opposite, Ryabkov added.
“Geopolitically pulling apart the [post-Soviet] space according to what priorities the authorities of these territories have, which goals they are seeking – this is the only standard by which Washington lives by,” Ryabkov concluded.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has long been promoting the idea of Eurasian integration, with many analysts seeing this as a key step in re-establishing Russia’s influence among former Soviet republics.
On May 29, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan signed the treaty on the creation of the Eurasian Economic Union, which is to enter into force on January 1, 2015.
The EAU envisions a common economic market with the potential to become a new and influential region of economic growth and development.
