MOSCOW, September 1. /TASS/: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the length of the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan may help shine some light on how long the West will support Ukraine.
At a meeting with students and faculty of Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO University), the top diplomat drew attention to statements by Western politicians about plans to support Ukraine "for as long as it takes."
"We discussed this informally with our colleagues at the BRICS Summit, and they asked me: how much do you think they will have to prop up Ukraine for it to win on the battlefield? I said: I can't guess, but there are examples - look how much time it took them to achieve their goals in Iraq, how much time it took them in Afghanistan," Lavrov said. "I think the answer here is clear," he pointed out.
When asked how long it could take to create a more just and sustainable world order, the top diplomat admitted that "it is impossible to predict these things." "It is not the rotation of the Earth, which is subject to the laws of astronomy, and not other processes in the field of exact sciences - history depends greatly on the personalities of those in charge," Lavrov explained.
"If a state is headed by a certain personality - bright or gray, you can observe daily in television reports and on the Internet, how many personalities who have headed this or that state, make decisions aimed solely at perpetuating their own, as they believe, dominance, and there are personalities who understand the need to join forces, that there is a large number of risks and threats to all mankind, and only together is it possible to cope with them, coming up with solutions to overcome them, ones which meet the interests of the world," he said.
Failure of green transition
The foreign minister cited the so-called green transition as an example. Some time ago, the EU began to reduce investments in hydrocarbon production and abandon nuclear power. "Then the wind blew in the wrong direction, the tides turned, the sun did not shine much, and now they are cleaning all this up, while to this day still forcing African countries and other third world countries to accelerate the transition to a green economy, although they themselves have long exceeded all previous indicators of coal consumption," the top diplomat said.
He also cited the position of African countries, which remind the West of the need to fulfill the promise to allocate money every year to help developing countries in the implementation of the green transition. "Nothing has been done. When we met in the BRICS framework, many of our colleagues recalled this and compared these promises - ten billion dollars annually, which were simply forgotten, and the amount of the West's assistance to Ukraine over the past year and a half," Lavrov said.
Emergence of multipolarity, role of personality in history
He pointed out that "now, gradually, not very loudly, but more and more sober voices are heard in Western countries calling for compromise, agreements that will take into account the security and economic interests of all states without exception, to abandon diktat, as that has never made life better for anyone."
Lavrov opined that "building a foreign policy on the basis of slogans, moreover, aggressive slogans, is a road to nowhere and leads to wars." "Something, in fact, we are now seeing in various regions of the world," he pointed out. The foreign minister stressed that moving towards multipolarity in the world "is unstoppable, and is the inevitable course of history." "It is difficult to say how long it will last. It was thought that the era of Western dominance would last forever, and it lasted about 500 years, but it is coming to an end," the top diplomat said.
In his opinion, establishing a more stable world order "has very deep historical roots" and "now this process reflects the objective reality, there are new centers of power that no longer want to play the role of an object of international cooperation, do not want to be subjected to the old principle of colonizers - to live at the expense of others." Lavrov once again cited the position of African countries, that they no longer want to simply supply minerals so that the profits from their processing go to other states.
"We will support these processes (movement towards multipolarity - TASS), but we cannot exclude that somewhere, someone will come to power with aims that do not adhere at all to historical trends," the Russian foreign minister summed up.
