Russia says no more business as usual with EU
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says Moscow will no longer engage in joint projects with the European Union as the West has been waging a hybrid war against Russia over Ukraine.
In an interview with TASS on Tuesday, Lavrov said Moscow-EU ties were "at historic lows" for what he said were well-known reasons.
"Soon after the special military operation was launched, the EU's Brussels followed in the footsteps of the US and NATO to wage a hybrid war against us. The EU's diplomacy chief Josep Borrell was one of the first to call for Russia's defeat on the battlefield," Russia's top diplomat said, using a Russian term to refer to the military offensive against Ukraine.
Russia started the offensive against Ukraine with the declared aim of "de-Nazifying" the country on February 24, accusing Kiev of failing to implement the terms of an earlier peace agreement with the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Since the onset of the war, the United States and its European allies have imposed waves of unprecedented economic sanctions on Moscow while supplying large consignments of heavy weaponry to Kiev. The Kremlin has said that the sanctions and the Western military assistance will prolong the war.
"Naturally, there will be no more 'business as usual' with such counterparties. We do not intend either to knock on closed doors or initiate any joint projects," Lavrov stressed, adding, "Thank God, the world is not just the European Union for us and we have lots of friends and like-minded nations elsewhere."
The Russian foreign minister also denounced the ruling elite in the European bloc for what he said was harming the vital interests and well-being of their own citizens.
"They have been following the anti-Russian lead of the hegemony across the ocean almost in full obedience and sometimes even outdoing [the US]," Lavrov said.
He pointed to a US ban on European countries maintaining energy dialog with Russia, which he said had guaranteed Europeans' unprecedented prosperity for decades.
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