MOSCOW, January 18. /TASS/. Russia has finally got rid of any possible illusions about the West after the start of the special operation and now knows that it cannot be trusted, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a news conference on the achievements of Russian diplomacy in 2023.

"Any illusions, if some still remained since the 1990s, that the West has now opened its arms to us and that democracy will unite us all - all these illusions have finally vanished. The West is not trustworthy," Lavrov said.

He remarked that the Western countries had demonstrated that they only want to "live at the expense of others and be smarter than everyone else."

Lavrov explained that in this way a number of factors related to the West's hybrid comprehensive aggression against Russia helped Russian society understand "how it should go on living."