MOSCOW, September 10. /TASS/. Russia won’t consider Western stance on the coup d’etat in Ukraine as an obstacle for strategic partnership with the European Union, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters at a news conference on Tuesday.
"We don’t forget either what happened in 2014 or how the coup d’etat was backed, which was carried out despite the fact that the EU, represented by France, Germany and Poland, had guaranteed a deal between President Viktor Yanukovich and the opposition on February 20, 2014," Lavrov said.
"But we won’t view Western steps in that situation as an obstacle for developing our strategic partnership with the EU, which actually remains strategic on paper," Russia’s top diplomat said.
Elaborating on Russia's relations with the West, the top diplomat singled out French President Emmanuel Macron's position. According to Lavrov, Macron pays particular attention to dialogue with Russia, because he understands that relations between the West and Moscow are abnormal.
"President Macron has been paying particular attention to relations with Russia ever since he assumed office, realizing that the situation, which arose because of the West’s response to the 2014 developments in Crimea and Ukraine, when the Russian language and Russian culture were faced with a thinly veiled threat from nationalists who had come to power, was abnormal," he said.
The minister noted that Macron’s remarks about the need for a broad dialogue with Russia showed that he was a responsible statesman who cared about France’s national interests and "the vital interests of the whole of Europe."