Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Mikhail Voskresenskiy / Sputnik
The Russian state-run TV network RT reports (source):
Rex Tillerson’s criticism in Ethiopia of China’s policy in Africa is inappropriate, says Russia’s Sergey Lavrov. From Zimbabwe, Lavrov slammed the US for interfering in other countries’ affairs, pursuing neo-imperialist ambitions.
“I didn’t know that [US Secretary of State] Rex Tillerson is a specialist in Chinese-American relations,” Lavrov said after he met with Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa in Harare. He added that “it’s not exactly appropriate” for Tillerson to speak about Africa’s relations with other countries while a guest on the Dark Continent – especially in such “a negative way.”
Lavrov made his statement almost at the same time his American colleague was some 3,000km further north – where he warned Africans about China’s influence. He urged African countries to carefully weigh the benefits of Chinese loans at a news conference in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, during his first diplomatic trip to the continent.
“We are not in any way attempting to keep Chinese dollars from Africa,” he said.
By interfering in the internal affairs of other counties, the US seems to be pursuing “neo-imperialist” ambitions, Lavrov said. “We don’t share such an approach. I consider it ‘neo-imperialist’. And we will never pursue such policies,” he added.
Lavov added that Russia “has never interfered in other countries’ affairs, despite Washington and other Western countries claiming the contrary on a daily basis.” He stressed, though, that “not a single fact of this has been presented.”
In the meantime, Lavrov denied the US State Department’s claims about the absence of US-Russia discussions on a possible meeting between him and the secretary of state.
“I didn’t want to make a comment on this topic, but today the US State Department stated that there have been no discussions of our possible meeting with [Tillerson]. I can say that this is untrue,” he said.
“…Lavrov slammed the US for interfering in other countries’ affairs, pursuing neo-imperialist ambitions.”
Neo-imperialist? Was Lavrov drunk when he made this statement? My government has been pretty consistent with it’s imperialist ambitions. Neo-cons here have a garbage pail of newsspeak terms to cloak those ambitions – R2P, regime-change, ‘protecting US interests’, stopping evil-doers, etc. but they all mean the same thing: plain, old imperialism as usual.
True, my leaders (or their masters) are pathetically trying to cling to a crumbling US empire (or whatever is left of it) abroad, and ‘expansion’ hasn’t been working real well since the first big post-WWII failure in Vietnam (Korea was only a half-failure). But that hasn’t stopped them from recruiting increasingly shady ‘allies’ and doubling-down anyways. In fact, we’ve declined to sort of a second-tier imperialism role, useful only in building Israeli and Saudi Arabian ’empires’. 16 years in Afghanistan and damn near starting WWIII over Ukraine, yet both of those places still are abject shitholes (and getting worse) with impossibly corrupt and useless US-backed governments. We should get out of the empire-building business. We suck at it.
Not neo-imperialism, Lavrov. It’s old-timey US imperialism with a new marketing team.
Indeed, the Neo- part is a joke. Lavrov is probably tired. Or maybe he got mixed up – it is in fact Russia that has come back with imperialist cravings.
You are correct it is still the same old Imperialism the US learned at the suckling teat of Great Britain. Imperials like this backed the Turks against Russia and eastern Europeans in general all Russian Empire Citizens.
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For sure, USA is scared and will immediatly stop interferencing in other countries affairs. XD.
I don’t understand this russian diplomacy. “US is imperialism. We don’t act like that”. That’s so useless. Seems like Russia has no goal and play randomly.
I like Russia’s fight against the empire but seriously Lavrov is sounding like a broken record now