Lavrov tells all

After months of increasing diplomatic tensions between the United States and Russia, presidents Trump and Putin met in Helsinki, Finland on 16 July after the NATO summit held the previous week. Since that meeting, President Trump has invited Putin to the United States for another one-on-one. He is yet to respond.

Before the NATO summit held in Brussels on 11 and 12 July, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov sat down with Larry King to shed some light on the current diplomatic issues the United States and Russia are toying with.

For Russia, Lavrov said, an ideal outcome of the meeting would be to “agree, to engage all the channels on all the issues, which are divisive and to try to get closer on those topics.

“It is very unfortunate that we have our relations in this state. It all started when the US began to understand that Russia wants to have its own view of how to build its own country, how to protect its own security and how to organise its own development. Russia believes that given its millennium history, given its traditions, given its national character and its values that Russia also has a right to have a say in world affairs on an equal basis.



Crimean issues

On the top of the list is the apparent meddling in the 2016 elections in the US by the Russian government, along with issues such as Syria, the Crimean reunification, sanctions and military exercises.

NATO members had discussed what they considered the 'illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea' by Russia but Lavrov dismissed these claims as “Cold War inertia” adding that it is high time that NATO leaves it behind.

He said that NATO's expansion, often illegal, does not add to the security of the treaty saying that “today, we have common threats, common enemies: Terrorism, climate change, organised crime, drug trafficking. None of this is being effectively addressed by NATO expansion. NATO should certainly be taken as a reality, as I have said, but NATO should understand that it cannot dictate to each and every other country how to handle the international security matters. Dialogue is required.”

Lavrov said that NATO believes it is the only place where a country can get legal guarantees for its security.

What this indicates is that what NATO actually wants is to pull inside the alliance more and more members, getting closer and closer to the borders of the Russian Federation, thus violating another commitment that NATO members accepted in the context of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) summits - not to move and maintain the dividing lines to the East. “On the contrary, they have committed together with us to eliminate those dividing lines. Those are just few examples of how things have deteriorated.”

The Kremlin has often tried to engage NATO on international issues but, following Crimea, all communications have been frozen. But NATO's power continues to grow.

According to Lavrov: “The current statistics are that NATO together with the US spends about 20 times more than Russia spends on its defence.

Without the United States, the Europeans spend about four times more than Russia spends on its defence budget.”

The reunification of Crimea with Russia has caused an international backlash for Russia. According to Lavrov, the “current status of Crimea was determined by the people, who live there, in a referendum, which was free and fair and which was attended by many of international observers. Not official delegations from any country or from any international organisation, but international observers and human rights activists.”

He told King that Western powers “invent” rules for each individual case saying that when the United Nations wanted to discuss the Falkland Islands, the British instructed their ambassadors across the world to “convince the country of your posting that they should recognise that the status of the Falkland Islands was determined by a free and fair referendum of the people, who live there, in full agreement with the UN charter and the principle of self-determination of peoples.”

During the historic Trump-Putin meeting in Helsinki, Putin made it clear that the issue of Crimea is “closed” for Russia and will not be discussed.



That pipeline

However, Trump appears to be all over the place, having levelled harsh allegations in Brussels against US allies in Europe for not spending enough on NATO and furthermore, he accused Germany of being held “hostage” by Russia, apparently due to its reliance on that country for gas.

Lavrov told King that Russia sells gas to Germany and it is “business”.

A new pipeline, the Nord Stream 2 is currently under construction and will deliver Russian natural liquefied gas to Europe via the Baltic Sea. However, the Trump administration has threatened sanctions.

The American secretary of energy Rick Perry said: “The Nord Stream 2 pipeline must be stopped and those European countries, whose companies would be participating in this project, would be sanctioned by the United States, because the US is for competition and for the sake of competition there must be new terminals to receive American liquefied natural gas.”

According to Lavrov it is simple competition. “I have always believed in free competition, because the free market is about fair competition.

And when speaking of gas and Germany, some competition I would say. Of course, if 'Russian authoritarian gas' is supposed to be worse that the 'democratic American gas' then I am awfully sorry, but this is not economy, this is not competition, this is pure ideology.”

The United States is aggressively pursuing markets for its natural gas in Europe.



Elections meddling

Moving on to the alleged meddling in the 2016 American presidential elections, Lavrov told King that Russia is waiting for facts.

“Those who are interested can take a look at the piece written by former American ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock, who described the report produced regarding the alleged Russian interference and showed the inefficiencies, inaccuracies and inconsistencies in filing this report without, for example, expressing the view which the military intelligence had.

It is a report signed only by three agencies out of a dozens of intelligence agencies that the US has and which would normally participate.”

He added that the US Senate Intelligence Committee has said there is proof, but not a single fact was produced.

“Then, it was announced that the full report would be made secret, because of the 'sensitive information',” Lavrov said.

“It is exactly the same approach, as we see in our relations with the United Kingdom, which accused us ten years ago of poisoning one of the former intelligence officers, who resided in London, Mr Litvinenko.

The trial, which concluded that Russia was responsible, was also secret. Now the investigation of the Salisbury poisoning is also going on without any transparent information being provided to the public, without anything given to us, including access to a Russian citizen.

“A year and a half, even more, the investigation go on, hearings go on, but there is no single fact. Knowing the American system, I am convinced that with so many people involved in all these hearings: closed, public, secret, not secret, it is impossible that no single fact has been leaked yet into the public domain. The US system leaks very often.

“The Russian Government has nothing to do with what was going on during the American elections. We are ready to answer any questions that the American administration might have.”

Regarding Syria, Lavrov made a very powerful point in regard to Bashir Al-Assad being a 'dictator'.

“Saddam Hussein was a dictator, Muammar Gaddafi was a dictator. But if you compare the suffering of the people of Iraq and Libya under these two dictators and the present after the American and NATO interventions in violation of international law, then I believe the numbers of those who were killed, who were wounded, who fled their homes would be probably hundreds of thousands more than those, who suffered under those regimes. The same is true for Syria.

“The people, who ruined Iraq, who ruined Libya, who now try to invite the international community to share responsibility for the migrant crisis, are the same people who draw no conclusions and want to put Syria in the same state.

We condemn any violations of human rights, any violations of international humanitarian law, whoever commit them.

Trump and Putin discussed Syria but after the meeting, although Putin said the US and Russia could restore stability to the country and ensure that humanitarian crisis is resolved, Trump only spoke of Israel, saying its safety was paramount.

“We have worked with Israel long and hard for many years, many decades. I think we have never had any country any closer than we are.

President Putin is also helping Israel, and we both work with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, and they [Russia] would like to do certain things with respect to Syria, having to do with the safety of Israel. So in that respect, we would absolutely like to work in order to help Israel, and Israel will be working with us, so both countries will work jointly,” Trump said.

“Getting along with Russia is a good thing,” Trump said, adding that he thinks the world wants to see the two countries get along.

“We are the two great nuclear powers. We have 90% of the nuclear and that is not a good thing, is it a bad thing. Constructive dialogue between the United States and Russia affords the opportunity to open new pathways to peace and stability within our world,” Trump told reporters.

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