MOSCOW, March 24. /TASS/. Russia tends to believe promises till the last and delay decisions, but now its authorities do not trust any of their Western colleagues, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with TASS General Director Andrey Kondrashov for the Belgrade documentary project.
"The experience of our communication with Western colleagues shows that we tend to believe till the last <…> and constantly postpone final decisions. Subsequently it turned out that all the promises, which were also fixed on paper and in resolutions of the UN Security Council, were hypocrisy, and even outright lies," Lavrov said.
The minister recalled the March interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which the Russian leader noted that he did not trust anyone.
"He (the President - TASS) did not come to this conclusion immediately. We wanted to believe for a long time, we hoped, we signed agreements. Including in July 1999 after that NATO aggression, when they already realized that there were no even civil facilities left, let alone military ones. They had bombed bridges, a television center, destroyed government buildings. Then the Americans came to the UN Security Council, involved [former Russian Prime Minister Viktor] Chernomyrdin at that time. The Finnish mediator Martti Ahtisaari was there. They adopted resolution 1244. From the very first days of its unanimous adoption, it was sabotaged by the West in almost all key issues on which it was important for the Serbs to obtain a decision from the Security Council. In particular, the presence of Serbian border guards and customs officers on a certain scale was recorded there," Lavrov stressed.
Even though, as the Russian top diplomat noted, after that "absolutely treacherous, gross violation of all conceivable norms of international law," the patience of the Russian side was there based on the it is never long that comes at last principle.
"But later it turned out that all the promises, which were also recorded on paper and in UN Security Council resolutions, were hypocrisy, or even outright lies. The same goes for the Minsk agreements. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and ex-French President Francois Hollande admitted that they had no intention of implementing anything," Lavrov concluded.