Moscow does not intend to leave unanswered the sanctions imposed by Western states, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Answering a question from an RT correspondent about the current state of relations between Russia and the EU, the minister stated that a series of restrictions, initially launched by members of the European Union and a number of other countries, including the United States, continues.
"The architecture of these relations, which was unprecedentedly developed at one time, was destroyed by Brussels in connection with the events that took place in Ukraine, in Crimea, and which our Western colleagues did not like," the minister said during a press conference following talks with by his Armenian counterpart Ara Ayvazyan.
Lavrov is now on a working visit to Armenia, after which he will visit Azerbaijan.
At the same time, the foreign minister stressed that the chain of exchange of sanctions began in 2014, when Brussels “tried to dump everything from a sore head to a healthy one” after, contrary to its obligations, it supported the anti-constitutional coup in Ukraine, which was followed by well-known events.
“When the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine, including Crimea, rebelled against this outrage and the Crimeans voted for independence in the face of a direct military threat from neo-Nazis, we were accused of destroying the territorial integrity of Ukraine,” Lavrov recalled.
“We will not leave unanswered such attacks against Russia, representatives of the Russian leadership, parliamentarians of the Russian Federation, our companies, which, in the opinion of the European Union, are only guilty of being registered in a country that the European Union decided to declare an aggressor without any either on convincing grounds and absolutely illegitimate, ”the head of the Foreign Ministry stressed.
According to him, the manner of resorting to unilateral restrictions bypassing the UN Security Council decision “becomes infectious”: “The United States introduced this fashion, and the European Union, in my opinion, willingly picked it up.”
Recall that at the end of April, Moscow, in response to EU sanctions, published a list of eight European officials declared persona non grata on the territory of the Russian Federation.
As Sergey Lavrov explained, they took a decisive part in the next wave of sanctions against Russian officials, including parliamentarians.
Then the representatives of the European Union expressed their dissatisfaction with the measures taken by the Russian side.
In a joint statement by the head of the European Council Charles Michel, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Parliament President David Sassoli, it was said that Moscow's decision allegedly demonstrates Russia's choice in favor of "confrontation" with the European Union instead of seeking to fix bilateral relations.
According to the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry, the statements of European functionaries about the illegitimacy of Moscow's retaliatory actions and their lack of international legal justification indicate that the EU began to consider: "Everything is allowed."
Moreover, Lavrov noted that now the talk is already about impunity.
“When the European Union begins to threaten us with new sanctions, I begin to think that, in addition to this feeling of permissiveness and infallibility, the European Union is beginning to be overwhelmed by another mania, I mean complete impunity.
It seems to me that this path is completely dead-end, ”Lavrov said.
The minister stressed that this position is shared by many EU members, but "the aggressive Russophobic lobby in the EU is doing its job," and those who disagree cannot do anything about it and "go with the flow."
“It's sad, it's not our choice. I emphasize once again that if you just read the statistics of everything that happened after March 2014, you will instantly see who started this series of sanctions and what is the reason why we cannot but respond to this hostility, ”he concluded. Lavrov.