MOSCOW, December 10. /TASS/. Western countries nurture strategic plans of how to use their relations with third states in order to pit some of them against their neighbor, Russia, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in a televised interview with Kazakhstan’s Khabar-24 news channel on Saturday.
"Foreign partners should not ‘exploit’ their relations with third countries in order to attempt to drive a wedge between Russia and its neighbors, but nonetheless they hatch such strategic plans and do not even conceal that in their doctrinal documents," the minister said.
"For instance, look at how the European Union views Central Asia. They write blatantly and without hesitation that Russia’s influence must be reduced as well as the intensity of cooperation with its neighbors, not only in Central Asia but also all over the world," he added.
Lavrov pointed out that Moscow is convinced that Russia’s neighbors and closest allies realize that relationships with foreign countries should be equal, mutually beneficial and should meet the interests of each state.
"We will always be faced with the attempts to use various media occasions in order to strain our relations and make a distorted impression about Russians in Kazakhstan and Kazakhs in Russia," he continued.
"All this is part of big politics, of the ‘unsterile’ process in the modern world, politics did not use to be quite ‘sterile’, and even more so now. Western colleagues are trying by hook or by crook, by lies, by ‘prohibited techniques’ in breach of their own norms and rules to clamp down on the formation of a multipolar world," Lavrov said.