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Central Asian countries 'outraged' by West’s attempts to control them — Lavrov

According to the top Russian diplomat, Moscow has never objected to such communication platforms as "Central Asia +"

ASTANA, May 21. /TASS/. Central Asian countries are outraged by the Collective West’s pushy attempts to make them play by European rules, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

"Instead of offering equal and mutually beneficial cooperation, the West is seeking to control everything that goes on [in Eurasia], threatening and demanding that they [Central Asian countries] report about implementing secondary sanctions," he said after a ministerial meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) when asked whether Russia’s Central Asian partners are yielding to the West’s "courtship."

"My colleagues told me that they are outraged by such flagrant impudence and insolence," he noted.

According to the top Russian diplomat, Moscow has never objected to such communication platforms as "Central Asia +," but in the case of the United States and the European Union these mechanisms are being used to "intrude into literally all spheres of life" in Central Asian countries.

However, in his words, the West’s attempts to control the East are doomed to failure. He called on Eurasian countries and such organizations as the SCO "to take issues of development and internal order into their own hands."