Western powers have adopted a policy of “genocide through sanctions” against Russia, according to the former Cold War power’s top diplomat.
“I think it is worse, because during the Cold War there were channels of communication and there was no obsession with Russophobia, which looks like genocide by sanctions,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the BBC in a Monday interview.
Russian officials have blamed “Russophobia” repeatedly in recent years, as relations between the Kremlin and western capitals have cratered since 2014. The United States and European leaders cite the Russian annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine, along with electoral interference and support for Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime, as the factors driving the West’s imposition of economic sanctions on Russia.
Russia maintains that all those crises are functions of American and British conspiracy theories.
“It seems we are witnessing a new phenomenon in international relations, as now, apart from fake news, there is also fake diplomacy,” Lavrov said in November.
Russia has taken that line in recent debates over chemical weapons, most recently the reported attacks in the Syrian city of Douma, which is held by rebels.
“We have irrefutable proof that there was no chemical attack in Douma on April 7,” Alexander Shulgin, Russia’s ambassador to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said Monday.
Russia has likewise denied responsibility for the attempted assassination of a former Russian double agent living in England, who British authorities say was poisoned with “a military-grade nerve agent” developed by the Soviets during the Cold War. That incident prompted the United States, European allies, and NATO to expel dozens of Russian diplomats and intelligence officers in retaliation.
“The task was to demonize Russia and what we are witnessing now is part of a long-term program of unbridled Russophobia,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Monday. “It is a matter of not only Russia as a country, it is a matter of Russians and the Russian people.”
Such disputes continued into Monday, after the OPCW announced that Russia and Syria are preventing a team of investigators deployed to the country from accessing Douma.
“The Syrian regime has reportedly been seeking to conceal the evidence by searching evacuees from Douma to ensure samples are not being smuggled from this area, and a wider operation to conceal the facts of the attack is underway, supported by the Russians,” British Prime Minister Theresa May said.
