MOSCOW, February 11. /TASS/. Many NATO and European Union countries admit the counter-productivity and pointlessness of anti-Russian rhetoric but continue to indulge in it because of solidarity, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the Deistvuyushchiye Litsva (Political Actors) with Nailya Asker-zade program on the Rossiya-1 television channel on Sunday.
According to the Russian top diplomat, the Americans keep on compelling their NATO partners to demonstrate solidarity and recognize that Russia constitutes a threat. "Using this pretext, and they have been saying that for years, they expand NATO military infrastructure’s presence on the territories of their East European members, right along our borders," he said. "They have already deployed American, Canadian, German, British and Italian brigades there. That’s nothing but heavy-handed discipline."
"Nevertheless, in bilateral contacts, many NATO and European Union members tell us that they understand the senselessness and counter-productivity of this situation," Lavrov noted. "But solidarity and the consensus principle make them follow this path they don’t really like."
The Russian foreign minister stressed that Moscow would never be friends with either China or any other country against anyone. "China is likewise reluctant to be friends with us against the United States," he said. "We have never made friends with anyone against anyone."
"Our current relations with China are unprecedentedly good," the minister said. "Plans in our relations are absolutely honest, open and mutually beneficial. They are mutually agreed and rely on mutual respect and mutual interests. We simply develop mutually beneficial projects that are of no threat to Russia’s territorial integrity. This policy will be continued."
"We have large-scale, profound and much-promising plans of cooperation with China in all sphere," he underscored.