KHARTOUM, February 9. /TASS/. Western officials’ visits to Africa will not affect Moscow’s relations with its African partners, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday.
"As for its possible impact on our relations with African nations, everything that we hear, see and sense makes it clear that it won’t negatively affect our ties at all," the Russian top diplomat said at a joint press conference with Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Al-Sadiq Ali.
Lavrov pointed out that he had heard about the African trips of five or six Western diplomats, including those from the European Union, during a Russian delegation’s visit to Mauritania. "They seem to be hot on our heels," he went on to say. "When we were on a visit to South Africa, a large team of Western officials, including [EU top diplomat Josep] Borrell, arrived there the very next day," the Russian foreign minister added.
"Since they are trying so hard, they must feel they are wrong so they need to keep reminding countries on various continents that they are expected to advocate anti-Russian positions," Lavrov stressed. "Second, had our Western colleagues made at least one-one-thousandth of the efforts they are making now to call for the immediate implementation of the Minsk Agreements in the past eight years, there would have been no need for our special military operation," he maintained. "However, we understand now that implementing the Minsk accords was not the West’s plan. The plan was to prep Ukraine for a hybrid war against Russia in order to eliminate a rival on the international stage," the Russian top diplomat concluded.