MOSCOW, February 16. /TASS/. The European Union needs independence rather than power, otherwise it will be serving Washington’s interests rather than its own, a senior Russian lawmakers said on Sunday commenting on the EU top diplomat’s words.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, told the Munich Security Conference earlier in the day that the European Union needed to learn to speak force and action. "Europe has to develop an appetite for power," he said, noting he meant not only military power.
"The European Union need independence rather than power. And as long as it obediently following its ‘elder brother,’ who is already using secondary sanctions against its own European partners, its power will bring no good to Europe as it will be serving Washington’s interests," Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the international committee of Russia’s Federation Council upper parliament house, wrote on his Facebook account.
According to the Russian lawmaker, Borrell’s would sound right if Russian and the European Union shared a common notion of ‘action,’ i.e. independence and the ability to contribute to the resolution of common problems. "But the European Union seems to have a different understanding of the ability to act. Indeed, sometimes one really has to demonstrate force and resoluteness. For instance, when the EU nations opted to act as guarantors of the agreement between the government and the opposition in Kiev in 2014 to later back away disgracefully facilitating a constitutional coup and the subsequent civil war. It was resoluteness that was needed back then. It might have saved 13,000 lives in Ukraine," he stressed.
Resolute action, in his words, was also needed when the United States unilaterally withdrew from two major international agreements, on the Iranian nuclear program and on intermediate-and shorter-range missiles. "In both cases, Europe was either mumbling something inarticulate or making helpless gestures - what can we do, Washington has persuaded us," he noted.
More to it, resoluteness and firmness were needed when the United States blocked the implementation of such an important project as Nord Stream-2. But Europe demonstrated "utter helplessness of its diplomacy" again, Kosachev noted, adding that Brussels recalls the language of force only when it is supposed to follow Washington. "Only sanctions and threats, but for remarks by individual politicians, instead of flexibility and the ability to find solutions and maintain dialogue. No way, in such cases, the European Union boasts its resoluteness, solidarity and consensus, and unwillingness to compromise," he added.