MOSCOW, September 15. /TASS/. The European countries are seeing the prospects for overcoming the looming deep crisis in their economies rapidly slip away, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
"Many other developments are afoot, including Europe's loss of its status of an actor [with agency] in its own right and of the prospects for overcoming in the near future the phenomena pointing to a deep crisis that continue to plague the economy of the old continent, including those stemming from Washington's systematic policy of undermining Europe's political independence," Lavrov said at a roundtable discussion devoted to a potential settlement to the Ukrainian crisis.
He recounted that, "under the pretext of eliminating the EU's dependence on Russian gas supplies, they [the Europeans] were first compelled to stop buying pipeline gas."
"The resulting shortage has been compensated for with [US] supplies of costlier liquefied natural gas under pressure from Washington, which presents greater environmental risks to boot," Lavrov added.