Lavrov: Trump Has Opened Door To Address ‘Root Causes’ of Conflict

Dec. 11—Asked yesterday at Russia’s upper chamber, the Federation Council, about Russia’s “future dynamics” with Europe and the U.S., Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov explained:

“The West is not united, and recent events have shown this once again. In one of his interviews, President Trump offered a principled assessment of Europe artificially holding back the Ukraine settlement-related agreements that could have been reached and which would have eliminated the root causes that are the main obstacle on this path.

“Europe is hobbling this process and is trying in every possible way to goad the Ukrainian ‘leader’ and members of his regime into continuing to fight to the last Ukrainian. The problem is, they are running out of money. This ideological fervor is being affected by financial considerations…. This is happening despite a growing number of countries, including several EU member states and opposition parties in EU and NATO countries, recognizing the pointless and dead-end nature of this policy. Yet Europe’s desire to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia blinds it. …

“Against this backdrop, the United States and, above all, President Trump, is growing increasingly restless. He is the only Western leader who, immediately after taking office in January, began to show an understanding of the causes that made the war in Ukraine unavoidable and that underlie the hostile actions against the Russian Federation…. President Trump agreed that the underlying causes identified by Russia must indeed be eliminated. They include the unacceptability of drawing Ukraine into NATO and freeing the people whose rights were trampled after the 2014 coup from the authority of the Ukrainian regime. These matters are being widely discussed. …

“This obsession with infallibility and conviction that everything Europeans do stands head and shoulders above the traditions, norms, and laws of the rest of the world is among the reasons why President Trump and his associates increasingly speak about a profound crisis within the EU and the fact that it is heading in a direction that is clearly at odds with the realities of a multipolar world.”