The head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, castigates the USA
On the first day of his Latin America trip, which will continue in Venezuela and Brazil, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov criticized the USA and Western countries.
“The realities of a multipolar world (…) provoke an aggressive reaction on the part of the United States and other world minority countries that want to preserve their rule, their hegemony and their dictates by any means possible,” he said. said the head of Russian diplomacy during a meeting with his Cuban counterpart Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla in Havana.
“The means used by representatives of the United States and other Western countries to this end include not diplomacy, but blackmail, ultimatums, threats, the use of brutal military force and sanctions,” he said, according to a transcript of his speech published in Russian on the website of the Russian Ministry.
Cuba “knows firsthand what illegal pressure is, a total embargo that only the United States defends as a legitimate course of action,” he added. The Cuban foreign minister said he welcomed Mr. Lavrov as a “close ally.”
During his term in office, former Republican President Donald Trump (2017-2021) tightened the American embargo against Cuba that had been in effect since the 1960s, a measure that was hardly questioned by his Democratic successor Joe Biden. Moscow, for its part, has been the subject of increased Western sanctions since the start of its offensive against Ukraine in February 2022.
This is Lavrov's second visit to the communist island in less than a year. In April, he thanked Cuba for its “understanding” of the war in Ukraine. Havana, which has called for a negotiated solution to the conflict, has never condemned the Russian offensive.