Washington snubbed gestures of goodwill from President Vladimir Putin, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated in an interview with CBS, leading to an erosion of mutual trust.
"For many years, the United States has ignored the enormous expressions of goodwill on the part of Vladimir Putin throughout his first two terms," Lavrov said.
Russia’s top diplomat said that the “drive to ruin the foundations of Russian-American relations, including all agreements on strategic stability, parity, mutual trust, inspections, transparency, confidence-building, all this started to be ruined by [US] President George W. Bush.”
At this point, he recalled Washington’s exit from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.
Since then, the US has been demonstrating an escalating “superiority complex” and “impunity complex,” Lavrov underscored. He added that those in the US who “miscalculated” everything must “rethink” their stance.
“But, instead, we see the current generation of politicians in America having drawn no lessons of the unacceptable policy that Washington pursued after the demise of the USSR,” the foreign minister stated.
The current US administration led by Democratic POTUS Joe Biden is not interested in political dialogue with Russia, Lavrov noted. There are exceptions from time to time, such as contacts on the topic of exchanges, the functioning of embassies in Washington and Moscow, and the mission of Russian diplomats in New York, Lavrov said, but "never political issues.” He underscored that ️Moscow, on the other hand, is ready to listen to everyone who is interested in stopping the use of Ukraine as an instrument of war against Russia.
Sergey Lavrov also said he does not believe the situation regarding Ukraine would have been different if Republican Donald Trump had been elected US president.
During the interview, Sergey Lavrov weighed in on the latest violent spiral of the Palestine-Israel conflict, saying that more and more cruelty will occur in the Arab and Muslim world until a Palestinian state is created.
The Russian foreign minister is in New York for UN meetings on Ukraine and the Middle East.
Most impartial experts see that the West's continued support of the regime in Kiev impedes peace, Lavrov said at the UN Security Council in New York on Monday.
"Today, it is completely obvious to the overwhelming majority of non-biased experts that the key factor that impedes the search for paths to a peaceful resolution of the Ukrainian crisis is the ongoing Western support of the Kiev regime," Lavrov said. He put the blame for the recent civilian deaths at a Donetsk market on those who continue to funnel weapons to Kiev.
Sergey Lavrov compared the US stance on military funding for Ukraine to a profitable business project.
"Mr. Blinken, the US secretary of state, focuses on the fact that continued assistance to Ukraine is a guarantee of creating new jobs in the United States. As if this is not about financing a war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in Ukraine, but about some kind of profitable business project," Lavrov said.
Lavrov emphasized that there are no interests - and there never were - in the conflict with Russia in favor of the Ukrainian people. There are only “the interests of the Anglo-Saxons, their henchmen and the criminal, rotten Kiev elite, which is tied to the West by mutual responsibility and which is afraid of being swept away the day after the end of the war."
The Russian top diplomat pointed out that Moscow has never given up on a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine conflict.
"We never gave up on the peaceful resolution, we are always ready to negotiate — negotiate not about how to keep the leadership of the Kiev regime in place but about overcoming the inheritance of a decade-long destructive looting of the country and violence against the people, removing the reasons for the tragic Ukrainian situation," Lavrov said. However, the key factor hindering a resolution of the conflict in Ukraine is the continued support of the West, he added.
Lavrov also underscored that Moscow regards the so-called "Zelensky Peace Formula," developed and promoted by Kiev together with its puppet masters, as completely divorced from reality. Furthermore, while Moscow has repeatedly indicated that it is ready for negotiations, Kiev has introduced a ban on them at the legislative level.