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RUSSIAN Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the West and Nato on Saturday of being unable to change their cold war “genetic code.”
And he advised the US to abandon its claims to “eternal uniqueness.”
Speaking to the UN general assembly, Mr Lavrov said that the crisis in Ukraine had been the result of a coup d’etat backed by Washington and the European Union.
They wanted to pull the country out of its “organic role as a binding link” between East and West, he said, and deny it the opportunity for “neutral and non-bloc status.”
He insisted that the Russian annexation of Crimea earlier this year had been the choice of the largely Russian-speaking population there.
Former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchov had transferred control over the strategic Black Sea region to Ukraine from Russia in the 1950s without any popular consultation.
While the rhetoric was tough, top Carnegie Foundation Russia expert Andrew Weiss said Mr Lavrov’s speech kept “closely to themes the Russians have put forward throughout the Ukraine crisis.”
Immediately before Mr Lavrov spoke, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier claimed that Russia’s actions in retaking Crimea had been a crime.
“Russia has, with its annexation of Crimea, unilaterally changed existing borders in Europe and thus broke international law,” he said, though his own country played a similar role in breaking up Yugoslavia.
Mr Lavrov spurned the idea that Western economic sanctions would cause Moscow to reverse course on the issue of Ukraine.
“Attempts to put pressure on Russia and to compel it to abandon its values, truth and justice have no prospects whatsoever,” he said.
He hoped that the Ukraine crisis would be a lesson to Washington and Nato against trying to break “the deep-rooted and fraternal ties between the two peoples” of Russia and Ukraine.
Ukraine agreed at the weekend in a short-term deal brokered and guaranteed by the EU to pay $3.1 billion (£1.9bn) in debts to Russia by December 31 in exchange for guaranteed gas deliveries to Kiev and the EU through the winter.
