Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov outlined in an interview with RT Arabic that Western leaders believe to be exceptional and driven by delusions of grandeur and irrational fears.
We know that our Western friends have many phobias, many complexes. They have a superiority complex, the infallibility complex, and I believe they have some paranoia, Lavrov insisted.
He said that any process that does not include the West, which the West does not control, they perceive as opposition, a challenge to their dominance, and that Russia participates in various regional economic integration groups and organizations. It is time for them to get rid of this habit. Lavrov defended Moscow's opposition to the US and its allies, whom Russia accuses of imposing their will on other nations through unsavory methods. The drive to punish Russia with economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation in response to attacks on Ukraine, in which Washington wants to enroll the entire world, is the latest example, the top diplomat said.
He said that there was no bounds to the insolence of the Anglo-Saxon alliance, and we find confirmation of that every day. The West sends envoys and emissaries every day to every capital without exception to deliver ultimatums and blackmail. Russia is pleased to see that most of the states in Asia, Africa and Latin America are resisting the pressure, Lavrov said. Those nations don't want to compromise their national dignity and run around as servant boys doing the chores on behalf of the West he said.
Lavrov continued, saying that their attitude is nothing new and is the modern version of European colonialism. He believes that Western nations trying to preserve their dominant status are against the natural progress of humanity because history favors a multilateral future for the world.
The West sense of entitlement to do with the world as it sees fit often has disastrous consequences, Lavrov elaborated. In the 1990s, this was the case with Yugoslavia, which was destroyed when the US decided its interests required it, with Iraq in 2003 when the US used false pretexts to invade the country, and with Libya in 2011, Lavrov said.
There were authoritarian regimes in both Iraq and Libya, but there were no terrorists there. He pointed out that there was no constant fighting and military provocations.
That is the mentality of the Western states. He said that they believe that their security depends on the whole world and that they should rule the world.
Lavrov said that the current crisis in Ukraine stems from the same root cause, which is a Western disregard for Russian national security. He said Moscow was moving towards the military option to curb the threat because it ignored Moscow's objections to the enlargement of NATO in Europe for decades.
Russia attacked Ukraine in late February after Kiev failed to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German and French-brokered protocols were designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.
The Kremlin has demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was unprovoked and has denied that it was planning to retake the two republics by force.