Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned of US-led efforts to wage a destabilization movement in the country ahead of its 2024 presidential poll as part of its persisting “vicious practices” of meddling in the domestic affairs of other nations.
“The forms of such interference are very diverse, including threats, blackmail and the organization of ‘color revolutions’," Lavrov emphasized on Monday, in an apparent reference to the US-sponsored orange revolution in Ukraine in 2004.
Washington has continued its ongoing "vicious practices of interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign nations," he added while addressing a meeting of the country’s United Russia Party.
He went on to insist that Western countries have "openly set the goal of undermining domestic political stability in our country in the context of the 2024 presidential elections.”
Russia’s top diplomat further recalled the unsuccessful US-backed coup attempt in Belarus six years after "the bloody coup d'état in Ukraine that succeeded in 2014," underlining that “this obviously won’t be the last step."
Lavrov also alleged that US-led Western governments are waging a hybrid war against Moscow by using the “Kiev regime” as a tool by supplying the latest weaponry to the "Nazi activists in Ukraine," referring to the reported presence of large numbers of neo-Nazi elements among the Ukrainian armed forces.
"This policy also fits into the joint efforts by Washington and Brussels to maintain global dominance by trying to punish everyone who pursues an independent foreign policy and rejects the notorious rule-based order, he then noted, referring to the US-led NATO military alliance based in the Belgian capital.
“The Americans do not hide their intention to do all they can to contain China as well," Lavrov stressed.
Russian foreign minister concluded his remarks by emphasizing that the emerging trend is, however, to strengthen multi-polarity as new decision-making powers are flourishing across Eurasia, the Pacific, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, based on the “natural, inalienable right of peoples to determine their own destiny.”
This is while the Washington establishment and the mainstream media in the US have persistently accused, without evidence, Russia and other countries -- including Iran – of meddling in its congressional and presidential elections.
International observers and press reports, however, have repeatedly pointed to Washington’s overt efforts to influence and meddle in the elections of many countries across the globe – through funding opposition groups, launching media campaigns against governments and even plotting coups and armed insurgencies – most especially in nations that oppose US policies and interference in their internal affairs, such as Venezuela, Nicaragua, Peru, Iran, Georgia, Pakistan, and others.