Russia maintains good relations with the European countries which have their own national interests and seek to meet the people’s expectations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told an audience of students and teachers at the MGIMO university on Wednesday, Tass informs.
Russia has no problems with European countries that safeguard their interests
STEPANAKERT, SEPTEMBER 1, ARTSAKHPRESS: "If some country has a government concerned about national interests and projects that would meet the people’s needs and the requirements of the economy and its growth, as well as search for partners that will help address these tasks most effectively, there will be no problems in relations with countries in Central or Eastern Europe or any other country of the world," he said.
Lavrov stressed tight relations with Hungary, "which the European Union tries to criticize precisely for this reason."
"Hungary and Poland are called as countries that disobey the common European rules and principles and hold referendums calling into question LGBT rights," he added. "Hungary has held a referendum on a law that is an exact equivalent of the one existing in Russia. It does not prohibit anything, but merely introduces administrative responsibility for the propaganda of LGBT ideology among minors," he added.
Lavrov said that Russia and Hungary tightly cooperated on humanitarian issues. For instance, the countries campaigned actively to protect Christians in the Middle East.
"Incidentally, Poland is not ashamed of its past and present, while in other European countries, when we raise the issue of speaking out in Christians’ defense, we are told ‘This is not quite politically correct’," Lavrov said.
He stressed that Russia was working on a number of economic projects with countries in Eastern Europe, but such interaction with the Czech Republic came to a halt.
"We had quite a few common ideas with the Czech Republic, but lately that country preferred to put itself on the Russophobic track and made some outspokenly discriminatory decisions, including the expulsion of Rosatom from the contest for building another nuclear power plant reactor. To justify all this it offered various excuses that have never been proven," Lavrov explained.
"We are in the habit of hearing accusations of various deadly sins that have no proof to rely on. Our requests for providing the corresponding evidence are ignored. This is not a very serious position. It merely exposes the Western policy of groundless fanning of Russophobic tensions," Lavrov concluded.
