Post #852

🎙Address by Sergey Lavrov at the #G20 Ministerial Meeting on the role of the G20 in overcoming current international tensions 📍 Rio de Janeiro, 21 February 2024 💬When we join forces, the world can change for the better and move forward. The 20th century has become an important milestone in freeing humanity from the shackles of colonialism. <...> The transition to the era of détente during the Cold War allowed the United States and the USSR to lay a strong foundation for containing military risks and building reliable strategic security architecture, especially in Europe. It is regrettable that those achievements have been almost completely destroyed today. The objective process of the emergence of a multipolar world order driven by self-reliant nations and regions has met with serious resistance. The basic principles of international communication are being undermined at the instigation of the West. Universal legal norms and the principles of the UN Charter, including the sovereign equality of states, non-interference in internal affairs and self-determination of peoples, are being violated. Diplomacy as a means of peaceful settlement of disputes is being sacrificed to violent struggle, “hybrid wars”, total confrontation, and the desire to inflict a strategic defeat on the rival. Double standards, hypocrisy and direct lies are brought into play. <...> Instead of a UN-centred architecture, narrow bloc alliances, closed clubs, behind-the-scenes “best practices”, allegedly “reliable scientific data”, and pseudo-democratic ‘values’ are being promoted. The world is artificially divided into friends and foes, the “garden” and the “jungle”. <...> This is what the infamous “rules” the West imposes instead of the international law, appear in reality. <...> 🌐 Our forum of the world's leading economies could make clear its opposition to the use of “economy as a weapon” and “war as an investment” and to demonstrate our desire for open and equitable trade and economic cooperation. Read in full