KALININGRAD, August 17. /TASS/. The United States ignored Afghanistan’s traditions when trying to impose its values on the country, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, addressing students and professors at the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University on Tuesday.

"We know Afghanistan very well, we realize <…> how counterproductive it is to try to impose certain forms of government [on the country]," he pointed out. "The Americans, for instance, tried to build what they call democracy there," Lavrov noted.

"In the current situation, it is naive to pretend that it is possible to make the Afghan people live by the rules that the West lives by," the Russian top diplomat emphasized. "It is another attempt to impose their so-called values on the rest of the world, ignoring the traditions that other countries have preserved for centuries," he added. "I think this was the biggest mistake," Lavrov concluded.