The Essential Lavrov: The New World Project Interview

As complete IMO as possible

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's interview with Mohammed Kim for the New World project, Moscow, November 14, 2024 is perhaps the most complete deep dive interview of Lavrov I’ve read (and I’ve read 50+) and is made more provocative given the youth of the interviewer and what she represents: Russian youth that wants to help facilitate what it sees as a project to construct a very different world—A New World. Much more is explained comprehensively than usual. The first sentence Lavrov speaks in answer to the first Q is fascinating. It all begins now:

Question: Thank you for accepting the invitation of our Novy Mir project. We work with the Internet audience. This project is about the contours of the new world in which we live today. It is aimed at a youth audience. We talk about how the new world works, according to what rules, according to what canons it will be built.

Sergey Lavrov: In other words, you know all this?

Question: No. We discuss this with experts, with people who make decisions. We took a "cross-section" on the Internet, who they consider their heroes, who is interesting to listen to, and who makes decisions. The first number is President of Russia Vladimir Putin, and the second on the list is Sergey Lavrov.

Over the past decades, our diplomacy has been at its best, which has been absolutely recognised throughout the world thanks to the work of your team and you personally as a leader.

If not only as a Minister, but as a graduate of MGIMO, is everything that is happening in the world today expected or surprising for you?

Sergey Lavrov: Waiting is not part of the diplomatic profession, it is for political scientists. In 1991, when the Soviet Union disappeared, F. Fukuyama solemnly proclaimed the "end of history" and said (and he said that he did not expect it, but that he was sure) that from now on liberal democracy would rule the world in any country. Therefore, let political scientists fantasize and wait. We have to deal with very specific facts. But in order for them to be acceptable to us, we must do everything to strengthen our position on the world stage. This is what we are doing, proving our right to defend our security, our allies, people who belong to the Russian world and are our compatriots.

Now we are doing this in Ukraine. You can see the reaction of the West. I don't have any expectations. I will not express them, try to formulate them. We are engaged in a specific case - we ensure the foreign policy interests of Russia in a situation where our boys and girls are fighting as part of a special military operation.

The main task now is to achieve all the goals set by President of Russia Vladimir Putin. You hear what expectations the West has. They are constantly speculating, they say, let's stop "here" now, then a "truce", in ten years we will think about who to give Crimea and Donbass to. This is fortune-telling on coffee grounds. I will not do this. We have our own tasks. We will solve them.

Question: We are at the front. There is a film crew there, we make reports from there. They are closely following international relations and your statements. They respect you very much. The guys who are fighting at the front today want to understand the image of Victory, what they are fighting for. Do you have such an image as a person, a Minister? What is the image of Victory in Russia today?

Sergey Lavrov: We all have the same image of Russia's Victory – Victory. The most striking image is May 9, 1945.

I have no doubt that our heroes, who are now going on the offensive and ousting the enemy from our ancestral lands, are primarily inspired by the heroism of their fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers.

Question: We are trying to build, understand, and probe the contours of some boundaries of the modern world. Can we talk about such contours for the next 10, 20, 25 years? What will the political picture look like?

Sergey Lavrov: This question is not for me. We must ensure Russia's interests in full compliance with its Constitution and the tasks set by President Vladimir Putin, not only in the context of Ukraine, but in general within the framework of Russia's Foreign Policy Concept. This includes promoting the concept of the Greater Eurasian Partnership, so that all structures and countries located on the Eurasian continent promote contacts, exchange integration experience, harmonise their projects, and implement large-scale infrastructure tasks, including the well-known North-South International Transport Corridor project. This also includes the project to connect the ports of India with the ports of the Far East, the Northern Sea Route.

We have one continent, given by God, with huge, richest natural resources, with several thousand-year-old civilizations. It would be wrong not to take advantage of these competitive advantages. This is the meaning of the idea of the Greater Eurasian Partnership, in which we are already seeing the first steps through the EAEU, the SCO and ASEAN. Ties and dialogue are being established between them. The Greater Eurasian Partnership, if we move forward with all the plans, will create a solid material, economic and transport foundation for what President Vladimir Putin called a new architecture of Eurasian security.

Our interest is in this. Moreover, it was specifically said that this architecture, as well as the Greater Eurasian Partnership, should be open to all countries and continents, including the western part of Eurasia, which, so far, by inertia, is trying to ensure its interests within the framework of not the Eurasian (which would be natural, given geography), but the Euro-Atlantic security concept, thereby confirming that they are not going to do anything without the United States.

But these Euro-Atlantic motives are slowly disappearing from the positions and speeches of some European leaders. These are, first of all, Hungary and Slovakia. There are also a number of other politicians who are in opposition to the neoliberal regime that dominates Europe and are already beginning to think that you need to rely more on your own strength, on cooperation with those who are close to you.

The idea and interest of the Americans are clear. They are sitting "overseas", allegedly no one will "get them". And Europe will solve their problems both in terms of winding up and arming Ukraine against the Russian Federation, and in terms of paying for the tragedy in the Middle East.

Europe is now being dragged into the South China Sea, into the Taiwan Strait. Germany, France, Britain (where without it) participate in naval exercises there, create bloc systems - "threes", "fours", AUKUS, quads. All this is being done with the declared goal of containing China.

Our Western colleagues have their own views on Eurasian security. They boil down to the fact that the United States should "rule" everywhere. We oppose this selfish and aggressive approach with the concept of uniting the efforts of all countries on the continent and developing principles, taking into account the presence of such structures dealing with military and political issues as the SCO and the CSTO. ASEAN also has elements of military and political security.

We are building ties between them, leaving the door open for everyone who wants to work not on the basis of the "rules" that no one has seen, but which the West constantly puts forward as an indispensable condition for contacts with or without them, but on the basis of international law and its central element – the sovereign equality of states. That's what we're trying to achieve.

We still have many partners. Their number is growing outside the Eurasian continent. This is where our activity within BRICS comes into play. This is a separate topic.

Question: The topic of BRICS has become popular on the Internet. The young audience is stretching, trying to understand what kind of structure it is, how it will be built. There is even an expression – "everything will be BRICS" – that is, everything will be fine. This is a certain image of the new world order. You mentioned some structures capable of ensuring Eurasian security. Can such a single structure be built within the framework of BRICS, or is BRICS not about security at all, but more about the economy?

Sergey Lavrov: BRICS is all about the world order, which will be based on the main principle of the UN Charter – the sovereign equality of states. The alliance was created naturally when the fastest-growing economies felt the need to talk together and see if they could use their economic achievements to work more effectively on a global scale, using their contacts and influence.

The BRICS, unlike the G7 and other institutions controlled by the West (including the Bretton Woods institutions, the WTO), simply came to the conclusion: everything that is still kept under control by the Americans now, created by them many years ago and "sold" to everyone as a global good (their concepts of globalization, inviolability of property, fair competition, the presumption of innocence – what not), collapsed overnight. when they wanted to "punish" Russia.

By the way, more than half of the countries in the world are under sanctions. Perhaps not under such unprecedented consequences as are being used against Russia, North Korea, Iran and Venezuela. The real reason why they are now so literally "frenzied" is that China is quickly and confidently "bypassing" America. Moreover, China does this on the basis of the norms laid down by the Americans in institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO. And it "bypasses" despite the fact that the Americans abuse these institutions and mechanisms in every possible way.

The task of containing China was put forward by the Biden administration. I proceed from the assumption that it will remain a priority for the Trump administration as well. We are the "threat" of today. Washington cannot allow Russia to prove that it is a "strong player" and that it "undermines" the reputation of the West. They don't care about Ukraine. Their reputation is important to them: they said that there would be such a government in Ukraine, and then someone suddenly dared to object. Russia? A large country, but it must be "put in its place". This is what we are talking about, and not at all about the fate of the Ukrainian people. They are not interested in the people.

Vladimir Zelensky, already realising that the Westerners do not care about the people, suggested that the West take all of Ukraine's natural resources and own them in his "victory plan", and his country would send police and military personnel to ensure order in Europe, because the Americans are already tired of it. It is planned to leave a certain number of Americans there, and then the "gauleiters" and "elders" (similar to what happened during the Great Patriotic War and World War II) will do the "dirty" work of restraining protests and suppressing those who want to be guided not by Brussels (neoliberal, dictatorial) dogma, but by the protection of national interests. This is a big process.

BRICS, of course, has to do with Eurasia in the sense that there are China, India, Russia and Pakistan. This is understandable.

The SCO is about the Eurasian continent. The way the organisation is developing, what plans it formulates, and then implements them both in the economy and in the military-political sphere. Anti-terrorist exercises are being conducted. There is very close cooperation between law enforcement agencies through the security councils of member countries. There is a humanitarian aspect: the exchange of best practices in the field of education, cultural programs, and sports events. This is a regional process that we stimulate and encourage in every possible way. We are also sympathetic and ready to help deepen integration within the African Union and CELAC.

All these structures have now become more active. They are increasingly aware of the unreliability of the mechanisms for the functioning of the world economy and relations that were proposed by the West and accepted by everyone. Now Western countries are harshly abusing them. No one wants to be next. No one knows on which leg anyone in Washington will get up tomorrow, who will not be sympathetic to him and with whom he will begin to talk "in the language of diktat."

Without opposing the existing institutions, the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, without demanding their closure, but seeking a fair reform of these structures, at the same time, the countries of the Global South and the East, the World Majority are creating their own parallel mechanisms of settlements, insurance, and logistics chains so as not to depend on the stock exchange.

At the last BRICS summit in Kazan, we proposed the creation of a BRICS grain exchange. Everyone reacted positively to this. All this is being done in order to trade normally, calmly, to use various routes, banking ties that would be protected from diktat and possible damage by those who control the classical structures of the world economy.

In Eurasia, there are regional integrations that I have mentioned, such as the SCO, the EAEU, ASEAN and contacts between them, in Africa – the African Union, in Latin America – CELAC. At the global level, everyone sees BRICS as a flexible, unbureaucratic structure that can harmonize all these regional processes. The leading countries of the SCO, ASEAN, the African Union and Latin America are represented among the members of this association, including the Arab world (this is an important thing), or among the countries that traditionally cooperate with it in the "BRICS plus/outreach" format.

Now we have created a category of partner countries. More than 30 states want to get closer to the BRICS. This is a serious trend that makes it possible at this level, at the summits of the association, to discuss the issues of harmonising the work of the World Majority in all areas: in the economy, politics, finance, and the humanitarian sphere.

Question: Is it correct to say that BRICS today is an integration platform that is ready to include the organisations you mentioned? Is it about institutional development? Will there be a headquarters within the BRICS (in a neutral country) or are there no such talks at this stage yet?

Sergey Lavrov: BRICS is not a platform. This is a natural association in which regional integration platforms see an ally and a way to harmonize their plans at the global level.

There is no talk of bureaucratization of the BRICS. Everyone is impressed by flexibility. Every year, the chairing country changes in accordance with the alphabet. It performs the functions of a secretariat, organizer of various events, etc. I am sure that this is the best option for this fairly long period.

Question: The BRICS summit in Kazan is indeed a landmark event (almost 30 heads of state). Can it be compared in scale with some historical event – Tehran, Vienna? President of Russia Vladimir Putin mentioned the Westphalian system of international relations and the Yalta system. This is some kind of a new stage. Can this stage be named?

Sergey Lavrov: Name the BRICS stage. But all the examples you have just mentioned are about something else. These were meetings where the world was divided (as we say) "according to concepts". Everyone wanted to defend as many rights as possible in the emerging systems, including Yalta. And the Soviet Union achieved this. But it was still a "division of the world".

BRICS is not going to divide the world at all. This is an association of countries that want them to live in the lands they inherited from God and their predecessors, as is customary in their great civilizations. These are China, India, Iran, Russia, and many other states. They want no one to dictate to them how to trade, not to prohibit them from engaging in the cultivation of natural resources, as is the case in Africa.

We have just held a meeting in Sochi, the first ministerial conference of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum. The overwhelming majority of participants said that they could no longer put up with a situation where everything that nature gave them - the richest reserves, including rare earth metals, uranium and much more - they extract with the help of Western companies. And they take everything to their processing plants, and all the added value and profit remain there. This is pure neocolonialism.

This is a topic that United Russia is actively promoting in cooperation with its sister parties in the countries of the Global South. In February of this year. the founding congress of the inter-party movement "For the Freedom of Nations!" was convened. Its goal is to combat modern practices of neocolonialism. In June of this year, United Russia held an inter-party event in Vladivostok dedicated to this task. A permanent forum has already been created. It is called "For the freedom of nations!". Many African and other parties are represented in it. It is important for Africans to be in control of their wealth and destiny.

In 2023, I was instructed to represent President of Russia Vladimir Putin at the BRICS summit in Johannesburg. There was a whole story with refueling the plane for the flight back. It turned out that almost all companies that refuel aviation fuel do not belong to South Africa. In Brazil, there was the same situation when I was on a visit there. It was impossible to refuel. Of course, this is annoying.

When the Americans impose such sanctions, they do not understand that they will be forced to be afraid of them at some point in order to avoid "secondary punishments." Normal people inevitably form and strengthen resentment for their violated sovereignty. Donald Trump intuitively sensed this when he said that using the dollar as a weapon is the Biden administration's biggest mistake, because by doing so they are creating the ground, the conditions for abandoning the dollar.

Once upon a time, almost all trade within the BRICS was in dollars, and now it is less than 30%. This is a serious indicator.

Question: Can Russia lead the movement for the freedom of states that are still experiencing the remnants of colonialism in a leading position? Has the time come to adopt some kind of declaration against modern forms of colonialism? Is it possible to carry out such work in BRICS? Does the modern world need to be clearly told today that colonialism is "everything"?

Sergey Lavrov: First of all, colonialism is not "everything." Unfortunately, not all the territories that were the colonial possessions of Western countries have yet been liberated. Their release was demanded by the UN General Assembly back in 1960. In violation of its resolutions, France, Britain and a number of other Western states refuse to liberate what they once seized through colonial wars.

But there is no need to create a certain structure now. I have just mentioned that at the initiative of the United Russia party, the movement For Freedom of Nations! was created precisely in order to fight modern neo-colonialism practices (this is written in the charter and proclaimed in February of this year).

Colonialism still retains some "relapses" in the form of small island states, primarily in and around Africa. But decolonization took place as a global process. However, later, when Africa gained independence, it became clear that there was political independence, but (a simple example) they could not refuel their guest's plane.

At the Russia-Africa Summit in 2023, President of Uganda Yousan Museveni gave the example of the global coffee market. Most coffee is grown and harvested in Africa. The world coffee market is estimated at about $ 450 billion. Less than 20% remains in Africa. President Museveni said that in Germany alone, due to processing, roasting, packaging and sales, the income from the coffee industry is greater than in the whole of Africa. They seem to be free countries, and their economies are largely bought by the former metropolises. When Zimbabwe decided decades ago to nationalize land from white farmers, it was punished with harsh sanctions.

Decolonization in the broad sense took place. But the real opportunity to dispose of your freedom and resources is different. This is where neocolonialism comes into play.

During the first ministerial conference of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum in Sochi and the Russia-Africa Summit in 2023 in St. Petersburg, trends that can be called Africa's "second awakening" were already clearly manifested. Having thrown off the chains of colonialism (this was the brutal subjugation of peoples by the Western metropolises), they realized that now it was necessary to throw off the "chains" of economic dependence. This process will be expanded.

Russia, unlike Western countries, invests in Africa in such a way as to stimulate the production of goods necessary for Africans. For example, we supply fertilizers. A number of African countries have the conditions to produce them themselves. We help them with this. There are many similar examples of localizing what they need and what we have. This is a different philosophy. It does not matter whether the "banner" with the inscription "Down with neocolonialism" is raised or the work will simply continue. Movement in this direction can no longer be stopped.

Question: You said that Donald Trump's coming to power will not affect US policy in Ukraine. Do you remain of this opinion or should we still take into account the fact that US President Donald Trump is being appointed to the administration, and the candidacies and names of those people who have repeatedly mentioned fatigue from Ukraine and the need to stop spending money on it? To the point that Donald Trump spoke about the US withdrawal from NATO. What do you think about the prospects for resolving the situation around Ukraine when the Trump administration comes to power?

Sergey Lavrov: Washington's principled attitude to Ukrainian and European affairs will not change in the sense that the United States will always seek to keep under its control everything that happens in the near-Soviet and, of course, NATO space. The European Union is now the same as the alliance in military-political terms. How this will be done, how they imagine the implementation of their "control" functions in the new conditions (it can be done in different ways) – I do not presume to guess. But I have no doubt that they will want to keep these processes under their control.

Some have now begun to take a more sober look at the Ukrainian situation and say that "much has already been lost and cannot be returned", let's somehow "freeze".

Question: Donald Trump said that "let's resolve it in 24 hours."

Sergey Lavrov: This is not what I am talking about. I don't want to pay attention to this. What those who are now trying to present as radically changing their position and wanting to stop the war are proposing, they still say, let's "act along the line of contact", "a truce for ten years", "we'll see later". But these are the same Minsk Agreements, only in a new "package". Even worse. The Minsk agreements were final, if someone had taken care to understand that this was so.

To be honest, it was about a small part of the Donbass. Everything collapsed because Vladimir Zelensky (and Petr Poroshenko before him) categorically refused to grant this part of Donbass, which would have remained Ukrainian, a special status in the form of the right to speak their native language. The West "swallowed" all this, despite our numerous reminders of the root causes of this conflict, including not only the involvement of Ukraine in NATO, but also the legislative, deliberate extermination of everything Russian.

Now on your air we will not even have time to list the laws that banned education, the media, cultural events, and simply the ban on the Russian language in everyday communication. No one pays attention to this.

Among those who are now expressing (as they write) "revolutionary ideas" in the camp of the Republicans on how to end the Ukrainian conflict, no one has mentioned anywhere that the population of Ukraine needs to return the rights to speak, study, teach their children and receive information in Russian. We have repeated this many times and continue to do so. None of the "architects" of the "Ukrainian settlement" in the West pays attention to this at all. From my point of view, this means (to the question of the similarity of the goals of any administration) that they are happy to weaken Russia and its influence, to weaken the Russian world, because in the end, everything that happens rests on the desire to suppress Russia as a competitor.

Americans have long proclaimed that there should not be a single state on Earth that would be more influential than the United States. This is what it all goes through. But their attitude to the Russian language (one of the most important human rights) is very indicative.

Question: The Trump administration has already appointed Elon Musk. Is there any "field" for fresh thought here?

Sergey Lavrov: There will be no expectations or guesswork. We will judge by specific cases.

Question: In Ukraine today, there is a big question about the legitimacy of the authorities. The media have reported that elections are possible in May 2025, in which, for example, Vladimir Zelensky will no longer be elected or will be re-elected. Will the elections resolve the issue of legitimacy, and will it be possible for Russia to negotiate with such a government after that?

Sergey Lavrov: I don't know. Elections can be organized in different ways. You see how they were "organized" in Moldova. It is possible to judge the legitimacy of this or that electoral process only when we understand that it took place, and see how it was organized.

Question: But there can be no peace agreement with the current Zelensky regime, do we understand correctly?

Sergey Lavrov: President of Russia Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that we have never refused to negotiate. Clearly, this will not be decided by Vladimir Zelensky. They call on us to negotiate and try to turn everything upside down, they say that it is Ukraine that wants negotiations, and Russia refuses.

Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that Vladimir Zelensky should at least repeal the two-year-old decree that prohibits negotiations with Vladimir Putin's government. I won't even dwell on it anymore.

Question: At a meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club, President Vladimir Putin had a thorough and well-founded report on the development of relations between the presidents of the Russian Federation and the United States. He mentioned both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. A certain part of the world has a feeling that it is possible to restore contacts between the administrations of Russia and the United States. Given your acquaintance with Donald Trump, is there a basis for restoring these contacts?

Sergey Lavrov: It is even strange to hear such a question. President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club that he is always ready to communicate. We didn't interrupt him – "the ball is on the other side".

Question: Today, Russia has made a global turn to the East, strengthening such powers as China and India in the next 10-20 years. Are we moving in the same direction with China and India, and can we say that Russia (given that China and India may have contradictions in general) can be a mediator between these powers that are gaining strength, including economic power?

Sergey Lavrov: We are moving in the same direction. This is the direction of strengthening national sovereignty, reliance on our own resources, primarily in the interests of development and maximum use of equal and mutually beneficial contacts with neighbours and partners. In this sense, Russia, India, and China remain an important triangle, which was institutionalized by Yevgeny Primakov in the late 1990s. [My Emphasis]

BRICS is an association, not a platform, that’s to unify the regional platforms with the bureaucracies located at the platform level. Lavrov and Russia’s diplomatic corp deal with facts as they present themselves in the real world, not some coffee ground world imagined by political scientists. Joe Friday: Just the facts Ma’am; just the facts. The battle has the Realists facing off against the Narrativites—straight drive versus continuous spin—”the Rules.” Trump is one of the latter and thinks he can persuade without employing facts in his arguments. The Loyalists he’s surrounding himself with are kinsmen and women. Perhaps the only realist so far is RFKjr. Lavrov is convinced by the fact of the continuity of Anti-Russian policy by the Outlaw US Empire since 1945 that it will continue with Trump just as it did the first time. Yes, there may be some wrinkles in the threadbare suit, most likely a different spin. Imagine Marco Rubio trying to talk to Lavrov. IMO, Lavrov doesn’t look forward to the encounter.

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