West seeks to destabilize Russia, will not achieve its goals — Lavrov

YEKATERINBURG, September 16. /TASS/. The West is seeking to undermine and destabilize the situation in Russia but will not achieve these goals, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at the International Youth Festival.

Lavrov noted that the current elections in Russia are taking place amid a "war declared on Russia by the collective West, a war that the West is waging with the hands and bodies of Ukrainians, supplying them with fantastic amounts of weapons, ammunition, advanced technologies, intelligence data, and satellite information – all of this is well known." The Russian foreign minister noted that the goal pursued by the West is nothing new – "to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia." "They talk about this less often now. The term 'strategic defeat' has faded somewhat. But the essence of their statements remains exactly the same," he said.

"And if they cannot destroy Russia – and I think that, despite their loud statements, there are still some intelligent politicians left there – they want to destabilize it. There are, however, entire groups of our former citizens who fled to the West and are now creating various organizations there for the decolonization of Russia, by which they mean its dismemberment. This is an old project. It was tried long ago and failed spectacularly after the disappearance of the Soviet Union; there were such attempts. But now they are trying to take it up again. I am certain they understand that they will not achieve their goals. But there are, of course, attempts to undermine the situation, destabilize the country, and make people, when they take their ballots to the polling stations, do something different from what both their hearts and their understanding of the long-term challenges our country is addressing tell them to do," Lavrov noted.

The International Festival of Youth is being held in Yekaterinburg from September 11 to 17. The event is expected to bring together 10,000 young leaders from 191 countries: 5,000 from Russia and 5,000 from other countries. The program will also involve 1,000 teenagers aged 14 to 17. TASS is the event’s general information partner.