🎙 Highlights from Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's remarks at the meeting with MGIMO University students (Moscow, 7 September 2026) 🔹 We have always been open to cooperating with those prepared to engage on the basis of equality, mutual benefit and the balance of interests. The vast majority of countries in the Global South and East are willing to do so. However, the West does not want this to happen. 🔹 The process of mounting tensions between us and the West did not begin because we wanted to "pick a fight". We simply wanted our truth and our legitimate interests, which are fully consistent with the principles enshrined in the UN Charter and other instruments of international law, to be heard and taken into account. 🔹The unprecedentedly aggressive actions taken to impose sanctions and to seize state assets and reserves [...] are nothing short of outright theft and plunder. Western countries are now engaging in plunder with regard to Russian assets and the so-called "shadow fleet". 🔹Once the globalisation created by the Americans, which everyone was being drawn into and persuaded to join, has been destroyed by its very creators, it means we need to be bolder in shaping new spaces in which rules will apply that cannot be unilaterally revised or changed at someone's whim. This is precisely what BRICS is doing now. 🔹 When it comes to security, we should set ourselves an ambitious goal, even if it will take time to achieve: a Eurasian security architecture that is open to all countries on the continent and does not involve actors from outside the region. This is not a utopian idea. At some point, it could become a reality. Real in full