Russian FM Lavrov lashes the West for disrupting his visit to Serbia

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Moscow was not going to respond to the decision of a number of countries that closed airspace to disrupt his visit to Serbia.

"As for the response, you know, we will never do anything that makes communication between peoples even more difficult. This is what our Western partners are doing,” he said during a press conference with reporters.

The number of reasonable people in Europe who already think about the reasons why they need to make Russia an enemy was growing, he added.

Earlier it was reported that Bulgaria, Montenegro and North Macedonia refused to let Lavrov's airplane fly in their airspace. The head of the Russian Foreign Ministry called the situation with his failed visit to Serbia unthinkable. The decision of a number of European countries deprived Belgrade of the right to pursue an independent foreign policy. According to him, if his visit is perceived in Europe as "almost a threat of global scale, then, apparently, things in the West are very bad," the Russian Foreign Minister said.

The West does not want to give Russia a word

By thwarting his visit to Serbia, Brussels did not want to give Russia an opportunity to express its position on a number of regional issues, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, TASS reports.

"We planned to consider a broad agenda: we wanted to talk, of course, about the rapidly developing strategic partnership in our bilateral relations. We also wanted to talk about international affairs, but, apparently, the Brussels puppeteers really didn't want to once again give us a platform to so that we, in the capital of Serbia, could state and reaffirm the Russian position both on the problem of Kosovo and on the problem of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Sergei Lavrov said.

The actions of the Western countries demonstrate that they will continue to exert all possible types of pressure on Moscow with all available methods and means, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, TASS reports.

"The West makes it clear that it will put pressure on us, and they will stop at nothing. They have already demonstrated such hypocrisy to us before, including during the tragic bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 that were conducted by those who believed in their victory in the Cold War, as well as in their right to build the world exclusively on their own patterns,” the minister said.