MOSCOW, April 13. /TASS/. Russia does not want Latin America to become an arena of confrontation between powers, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday.

"For us, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States is a foreign policy area in its own right. We do not want your region to become an arena of confrontation between powers," the top Russian diplomat said in an article entitled ‘Russia and Latin America: Future-Oriented Partnership and Cooperation’ published on the Russian Foreign Ministry website.

According to Lavrov, unlike former colonial metropolises, Russia does not put its partners before "an artificial choice: with us or against us" and does not divide them into "friends and strangers." "We want the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean to be strong politically united and economically sustainable," the top diplomat pointed out.

Lavrov stressed that the rapidly changing geopolitical landscape opened up new opportunities for the development of mutually beneficial cooperation between Russia and Latin American states. According to him, the countries of the region "are playing an increasingly important role in a multipolar world order."

Lavrov's article was translated into Portuguese for the Brazilian newspaper Folha and into Spanish for the Mexican magazine Buzos.