MOSCOW, May 27. /TASS/. A strong and independent European Union and its healthy relations with Russia are among Washington’s biggest strategic fears, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said on Friday.

"As for the relations between the United States and the European Union, one of Washington’s biggest strategic fears is a strong and independent European Union, a strong and independent Europe, which has healthy relations with Russia," he said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel.

According to Grushko, the United States doesn’t want the European Union to use economic and political benefits of energy and industrial cooperation with Russia. "That is why they are now targeting the very basis of relations with the Europeans, seeking to wreck energy cooperation, seeking to switch the Europeans to expensive American gas, to enhance Europe’s technological and financial dependence on the United States and thus bring Europe under their control economically," he noted.

"In terms of politics, the situation is clear as well: the United States is seeking to align all of its allies in what concerns struggling for a unipolar world, not to allow any splits among the allies and is pursuing this policy very persistently and toughly," he stressed.