VLADIVOSTOK, October 9. /TASS/. The West’s expectations that after 1992 Russia would shrink to its natural size have now turned into a hangover, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the Voskersnoye Vremya weekly news roundup on Russia’s television Channel One on Sunday.
"Maybe their inflated expectations that after 1992 or still a little bit earlier Russia, pardon my language, would be their ‘puppet’ have ended in a hangover not because we wanted to annoy but simply because we wanted very much to see our country independent, worth of living in and the one we want to be proud of," he said.
"The West, if seen as a whole, has been ruling the world for centuries," the Russian top diplomat said, adding that the situation changed after the emergence of the Soviet Union and the bipolar world order. But, despite the fact that the Soviet Union’s influence used to spread in Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America, "it was a closed world aloof from the global process, it was a world in itself, to a larger extent," he noted.
"When this anomaly - our being closed society was an anomaly - was gone, everybody thought that now Russia had ‘shrunk’ to its natural size and everything would be all right and they would be able to continue, like it had been since the 16th-17th centuries, to set the rules and laws and everybody would go on obeying. But, as you see they have gone wrong," Lavrov said.
"Children’s resentments or whims"
Lavrov does not rule out that some of the Western politicians are guided by personal motives, children’s resentments and whims in their relations with Russia.
"There can be something personal here," Lavrov said in an interview with the Voskersnoye Vremya weekly news roundup on Russia’s television Channel One on Sunday. "Some politicians seem to have a feeling that America is not doing something the way they would like it to, or maybe it is trying to do it but is failing."
"As far as Russian President Vladimir Putin is concerned, it seems to have become a ‘norm of well-bred behavior" in some of the Western capitals to use epithets in the manner as though they are competing to surpass one another," he said, adding he cannot remember the Russian president "to say anything insulting about any of his counterparts whatever he or she might do to or say about Russia."
Lavrov noted that some of Russia’s Western partners seem to be guided by children’s resentments or whims in their relations with Russia. "After all, it is vitally important for a politician not to shut the door close," he said. "It is not good and it means that a person is on the verge of a breakdown, which is inadmissible in politics. It is necessary to do everything in a well-balanced manner and have several possible scenarios meeting your interests but not to rely on only one scenario base on your and only your interests where all the rest are allocated the role with the only words, ‘Yes, Sir.’"
"It doesn’t work that way and will never do," Lavrov stressed.
U.S. actions provoke nuclear weapon proliferation
The modern world is less stable and settled than in the times of the Cold War, the U.S. interference with home affairs of other countries provokes interest to nuclear weapons for control, Lavrov said.
"Now, from the point of view of the global stability, is it less comfortable or settled, because back in those times was the bi-polar world, a tough though stable confrontation - the Soviet Union and the U.S., NATO and the Warsaw Treaty," the foreign minister said.
There was more clarity in the time of confrontation between the U.S. and the USSR, he said. The conflicts - in Vietnam, Korea, Mozambique, Angola, the military intervention in Hungary or Czechoslovakia - were on the fringes.
"Those were anyway though bloody and severe, but still local conflicts, where directly neither the Soviet Union or the United States were not involved against each other, and they realized the essence of the global stability was unsaid, or said in some documents, agreement," Lavrov said.
While in the modern world the number of players is not two, but more, like more are the countries, which have nuclear weapon: five of them have it officially, and at least four more pretend to be nuclear states, the minister said. And the recent international events cause interest to gain it, not to refuse from it, Lavrov said.
"While (Libya’s former head - TASS) Muammar Gaddafi had what he had as he chose to cooperate (in refusing from a nuclear program - TASS), North Korea has the weapon, but nobody recognizes it officially as a nuclear state, though nobody cares, then why do not they have a right of the kind."
"I consider it the biggest and most negative affect on the global stability, which the U.S. has made," Lavrov said.