💬 Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov: We are developing our multilateral cooperation on the Eurasian continent through venues and platforms that are based on the principles of equality, mutual benefit and honest dialogue, which are entirely different from those of Western-oriented structures [...] We are not building walls; we don’t want to isolate ourselves from Europe. But Europe has isolated itself from us. It has decided that our past cooperation was so important for the Russian Federation that we would plead and beg them to forgive, forget, go back, and lift sanctions. We won’t do this. It is against the genetic code of our people. We have, if you like, a pride of our own in the best sense of the word. We don’t need anybody’s goodwill. We have enough friends and partners who are ready to play fair. Europe is not ready to cooperate in earnest, nor does it know how to do it. For more than five hundred years, Europe has been the main source of many troubles and misfortunes that have afflicted humanity. It was where two world wars began, and it is also the source of the current situation, in which it has simply stifled itself with the sheer volume of illegal sanctions it has imposed in an attempt to defend what it considers its right to hegemony in global affairs [...] These unprecedented sanctions have been imposed simply because Russia is defending the interests of its people. The restrictions imposed on states that cooperate with or even simply trade with Russia demonstrate that this neo-imperial, colonial spirit remains deeply entrenched in Europe. Excerpt from FM Lavrov's remarks on the sidelines of the 11th Eastern Economic Forum, Vladivostok, 3 September 2026