MOSCOW, February 9. /TASS/. Moscow is not interested today in cooperating with the United Kingdom, Ireland and Canada against the backdrop of their current foreign policy strategy aimed at inflicting a "strategic defeat" on Russia, a high-ranking Russian diplomat said on Monday.
In an interview with Kommersant daily, Alexander Gusarov, head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s North Atlantic Department, noted that in the present-day, relations between London, Dublin and Ottawa with Moscow can be characterized by "the irrational ease with which, based on doubtful political expediency, the authorities of these countries have proactively destroyed almost all of the bilateral and mutually beneficial achievements reached in recent decades."
"This is why it is absolutely incorrect to speak today about any real cooperation regarding Britain, Ireland and Canada," he continued.
"It is of little interest to us, however, as long as the capitals of these countries stick to hatching plans of inflicting a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia, squandering their own dwindling budgets to fuel Kiev's neo-Nazis," Gusarov added.
The Russian diplomat noted that numerous inter-departmental cultural and humanitarian as well as inter-regional ties were brought to a halt in recent years "and the trade along with investments exchange were put in the cellar in terms of statistic margin errors while the cooperation in the sphere of law-enforcement bodies was actually zeroed-out."
"As it has been mentioned, diplomatic channels of dialogue were also put under strain, although their importance in the context of military and political tensions in the Euro-Atlantic region, inflated by the fault of Western countries, is difficult to overestimate," Gusarov said.
According to the Russian diplomat, authorities of the above-mentioned countries resort to any attempts to eradicate different-thinking approaches regarding Russia and "are actively involved in constructing administrative barriers for citizens of their countries."
"The most vivid example is a 2025 ruling in London to criminalize any unregistered interaction of its citizens as well as national businesses with the 'Russian state,'" Gusarov stressed.
"An influence of surreal characters portrayed in George Orwell’s masterpiece ‘1984’ can be clearly traced in the UK’s recently-enforced legislation," he added.