Western countries have made it a rule to talk with Moscow "from the position of the presumption of its guilt in everything."

This was stated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in an interview with the Croatian newspaper Vecherni List.

As an example, the Minister of Foreign Affairs cited earlier initiated by Germany and France sanctions against Russian citizens due to the incident with Alexei Navalny.

"What is Berlin's arrogant refusal to respond to numerous inquiries from our Prosecutor General's Office in the so-called Navalny case," Lavrov said.

According to the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Berlin thus did not fulfill the obligations assumed under the 1959 European Convention on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters. 

“Instead of respecting this international legal document, the representatives of Germany and France initiated another portion of the illegitimate EU sanctions against Russian citizens.

All this is regrettable and clearly illustrates the inability of the European Union to adequately assess what is happening in the world, the desire to put itself outside the law, ”Lavrov stressed.

As the Russian minister noted, Moscow does not leave without a reaction the anti-Russian attacks of its Western colleagues, who "have thoroughly forgotten what diplomacy is and have sunk to the level of banal rudeness."

  • Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

  • RIA News

  • © Press Service of the Russian Foreign Ministry

"Western brand"

In early October, in a joint statement, the Foreign Ministers of Germany and France, Heiko Maas and Jean-Yves Le Drian, announced the preparation of a new package of anti-Russian sanctions by the European Union due to the incident with Navalny.

The pretext for the introduction of restrictions was Moscow's alleged refusal to cooperate, as well as the findings of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which announced the discovery of traces of toxic substances in Navalny's analyzes. 

On October 12, participants in the meeting of the EU Foreign Ministers in Luxembourg announced their support for the initiative of Berlin and Paris on sanctions against the Russian Federation.

On October 15, the EU introduced restrictive measures against FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov, First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of Russia Sergei Kiriyenko, Head of the Presidential Department for Internal Policy Andrei Yarin and a number of other state officials of the Russian Federation.

Moscow has repeatedly noted the unwillingness of Germany and the OPCW to cooperate on the incident with Navalny.

In particular, the Russian side was not provided with official evidence of the blogger's poisoning, although the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation sent a request to German colleagues four times.

They were all ignored.

As a reminder, the doctors of the Omsk City Emergency Hospital No. 1, where Navalny was hospitalized on August 20, did not find traces of toxic substances.

On October 5, at a meeting with representatives of the Association of European Businesses in Russia (AEB), Sergey Lavrov focused on the fact that traces of poison from the Novichok group were found in the Bundeswehr laboratory, and not in the Charite clinic, where Navalny was taken for treatment.

  • Meeting of EU Foreign Ministers

  • Reuters

  • © Jean-Christophe Verhaegen / Pool

On October 10, the Russian Foreign Ministry demanded an explanation from Germany about the situation with the blogger.

The Foreign Ministry recalled that Russia completely got rid of its arsenal of chemical weapons in the fall of 2017.

At the same time, they worked with Novichok in no less than 20 Western countries.

“So Novichok is a purely Western brand.

It is synthesized and is available in these countries in about 140 variants.

We don't have it, ”the Foreign Ministry stressed.

Commenting on the situation with Navalny at a meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow was repeatedly accused of poisoning without proof.

“I say: well, give us the materials (on the poisoning of Navalny -

RT

)

, please

.

The first is biological material and an official conclusion, so that we can, in turn, further investigate this and so that we have official and legal-formal grounds for initiating a criminal case, ”Putin said.

"Blocks channels for dialogue"

As noted by experts interviewed by RT, the West has practically exhausted the potential of sanctions pressure on the Russian Federation.

Broken relations with Moscow only worsen the security and economic situation.

As a result, Europe is increasingly realizing the futility of talking with Russia in the language of restrictive measures.

For example, a member of the Italian Senate Committee on International Affairs and Migration Issues Gianluca Ferrara called on the European Union to lift the sanctions imposed against the Russian Federation.

He made such a statement on October 27 during a joint meeting of the members of the Federation Council and the upper house of the Italian parliament.  

“Russia is a very important country for us, which has always attracted our companies operating in the Russian market.

We continue to support and call on the European level to lift the sanctions, which undeservedly punish small and medium-sized Italian enterprises, which are the backbone of the Italian economy, ”stressed Ferrara.

  • Russian President Vladimir Putin and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte

  • RIA News

  • © Alexey Druzhinin

Konstantin Voronov, head of the Regional Problems and Conflicts Sector of the European Political Studies Department of the IMEMO RAS, believes that Ferrara's appeal indicates the activation of forces in Europe opposing the preservation of the sanctions regime.

According to him, such politicians realize that now it is necessary to move along the path of removing barriers to trade and economic interaction with the Russian Federation.

“The fact that the forces that are against this destructive policy have become more active cannot but rejoice.

They are aware of the need to contain the "sanctionists" whose policies negatively affect the economies of European countries.

For example, in Germany there is an awareness of the benefits of Nord Stream 2, Voronov argues.

It is noteworthy that German politicians have repeatedly called for the abolition of restrictions imposed against the Russian Federation due to damage to the national economy.

In particular, such statements were made by a member of the international committee of the Bundestag Waldemar Gerdt, chairman of the economic committee of the German parliament Klaus Ernst, Prime Minister of Saxony Michael Kretschmer. 

“By introducing new sanctions, German politicians represented by Angela Merkel, Heiko Maas and others compromise the interests of their country and condone US policy.

A similar picture is in Europe, which, according to various estimates, lost about € 100 billion from the sanctions. This is a payment for the loss of sovereignty, "said Alexei Mukhin, general director of the Center for Political Information, to RT. 

In a commentary to RT, Dmitry Suslov, a researcher at the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs at the Higher School of Economics, said that Europe is completely “inadequate in its assessment of the situation” with sanctions against the Russian Federation.

According to the expert, the situation in the world is developing in an unfavorable direction for the EU, however, to the detriment of their own interests, the leading European capitals still refuse to normalize relations with Russia.

“In fact, the EU's need for relations with Russia is only growing.

By deepening relations with Moscow, the EU has the opportunity to avoid marginalization, to avoid becoming one of the arenas of US-Chinese competition.

But instead, in the situation with Navalny, the European Union is blocking the channels for dialogue with Russia, "Suslov says.

According to the expert, EU restrictions did not cause serious economic damage to Russia.

At the same time, the high degree of Europe's dependence on trade and economic relations with Moscow has not disappeared anywhere.

Aleksey Kuznetsov, head of the Center for European Studies at the IMEMO RAS, shares a similar point of view.

In an interview with RT, the expert stressed that the anti-Russian sanctions, which Europe continues to initiate, will ultimately lead to an economic and geopolitical weakening of the EU. 

“Any sanctions hit including the country that introduces these sanctions.

And it is quite obvious that the severance of relations between Russia and the EU in the long term leads to a weakening of the EU's positions both in the world economy and in international politics, "Kuznetsov summed up.