{"id":227255,"date":"2021-02-09T08:31:47","date_gmt":"2021-02-09T08:31:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=227255"},"modified":"2021-02-11T06:55:11","modified_gmt":"2021-02-11T06:55:11","slug":"when-a-real-statesman-speaks-sergey-lavrov","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=227255","title":{"rendered":"When a real statesman speaks – Sergey Lavrov"},"content":{"rendered":"

Patreon \u2013 Feb 8, 2021<\/strong><\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, gave an impressive answer at a press conference during his meeting<\/a> with Jordanian Foreign Minister, Ayman Safadi:<\/p>\n

Question (translated from Arabic): Moscow\u2019s rhetoric on protests in the West, in part, on Capitol Hill, and the Western response to unauthorized actions in Moscow are very different. Don\u2019t you think that the Russian position is too diplomatic, thereby giving the West more opportunity to interfere in Russia\u2019s domestic affairs? Shouldn\u2019t Moscow start referring to those that were arrested for the riots on the Capitol as political prisoners?<\/p>\n

Sergey Lavrov<\/strong>: I\u2019d say that the West presents very specific, one-sided coverage of not only the events linked with Alexei Navalny but also everything that is taking place in Russia. The hysteria caused by his trial is out of proportion. The public is not told that the regulations for holding demonstrations, rallies and protests are much tougher in the West than in Russia. The police in the West have the right to curb any assembly that is not authorised or notified of in advance, or, if a notification was submitted, violate the procedures for holding it as agreed with the authorities. If demonstrators in Germany, France, the US or other Western countries take to the streets and prevent the normal functioning of transport, they can face several years in prison, huge fines and other penalties. The police are much tougher with them than our law-enforcement bodies as regards participating in illegal actions.<\/p>\n

Coverage of these actions in Russia and actions by opposition leaders in the West is also based on double standards. When they show events in Russia, the focus is on the police response to the behaviour of the demonstrators. The latter\u2019s actions are not shown at all, although looking at the footage on the internet, it is easy to see how aggressive those who took part in illegal actions were in Moscow and other Russian cities in the past few days. When the Western media cover similar events at home, they usually show outrageous behaviour by demonstrators like broken shop windows and cars on fire, but not the cruelty of the police. This applies to the footage of a police car driving over the bodies of demonstrators lying on the asphalt. As a rule, such footage is kept behind the scenes and can only be found on social media.<\/p>\n

To have this discussion (if the West is interested) along the lines of common sense and facts (the West is reluctant to discuss facts), we have prepared a video on how illegal actions are held and suppressed in the West and how our police reacted to the excesses of demonstrators during the recent events. Yesterday, we handed over this video to Foreign Minister of Sweden Ann Linde who is also the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office. Today, I sent the same video to Josep Borrell, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. We want him to see the objective picture based on specific facts from both sides rather than groundless accusations as he prepares for his visit to Moscow on Friday. Unfortunately, our Western colleagues have become used to such accusations, whether it\u2019s the Skripal case or the so-called Navalny \u201cpoisoning\u201d or the events related to his arrest and yesterday\u2019s court verdict.<\/p>\n

I understand those who think that Russia could be more aggressive in reacting to the openly high-handed, unseemly rhetoric from Western leaders. In our diplomatic and political culture, we are not used to resorting to thuggish rhetoric. We are polite people and are used to achieving our goals in a civil and civilised manner. As we say: \u201cGod is not in power but in truth.\u201d We also have a good proverb that should be remembered: \u201cHoney is sweet, but the bee stings.\u201d Those who take our polite manners for a sign of weakness are making a big mistake.<\/p>\n

To assist in bringing reports like the above to a wider public become a patron<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThose who take our polite manners for a sign of weakness are making a big mistake\u201d, says Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as he warns on Western double-standards <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,91,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-russia","category-The_Media"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=227255"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227297,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227255\/revisions\/227297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=227255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=227255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=227255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}