MOSCOW, December 29. /TASS/. The launch of Russia’s special military operation and the accession of the four new regions to the country ended 30 years of attempts by Moscow to build an equal partnership with the West, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.
Summing up the country’s foreign policy course in 2022, the ministry said the recognition of the sovereignty of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), the start of the special military operation, the holding of referendums in the two Donbass republics and in the liberated areas of the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions followed by their accession to the Russian Federation were "tough but necessary steps." "At the same time, they ended a 30-year period of honest attempts by Russia to build an equal partnership with the collective West," the Russian diplomats said.
Moscow’s resolute actions helped expose "the true intentions and attitude of Western countries" toward Russia. "By resorting to openly Russophobic rhetoric and acknowledging in public that the Minsk `set of measures’ was just a way to buy time for the Kiev regime and pump it full of NATO weapons, Western leaders declared their intention to deal a `strategic blow’ to our country and remove it from the global arena as a geopolitical entity," Russia’s Foreign Ministry concluded.