Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's speech and answers to media questions following his visit to the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria
I would like to once again express my sincere gratitude to Algerian President A. Tebboun, Foreign Minister R. Lamamre, and all our Algerian friends for their traditional hospitality and excellent organization of our work.
We have long-standing good sincere friendly relations, which turned 60 years old this year. This almost coincides with the date of the declaration of independence of Algeria.
In the interests of developing our ties, both within the framework of political dialogue and through trade, economic, military-technical, cultural, humanitarian cooperation, today we confirmed the invitation to Algerian President A. Tebboun on behalf of Russian President Vladimir Putin to pay an official visit to the Russian Federation.
The basic document in bilateral relations is the Declaration on Strategic Partnership of 2001. We confirmed our mutual interest in preparing a new interstate strategic document that will record the output of our interaction to a qualitatively new level.
We expressed satisfaction that, despite the pandemic of coronavirus infection, our trade turnover increased in 2021, exceeded $ 3 billion. There are good prospects to continue this trend. Many Russian companies are interested in implementing joint projects together with Algerian partners in such areas as energy, mineral resources, geological exploration, pharmaceuticals. These issues will be the focus of the next meeting of the Joint Intergovernmental Russian-Algerian Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation, which is scheduled to be held in Algeria in the coming months.
We talked about the further development of military-technical cooperation, which has strong roots and good prospects. The Russian Federation appreciates the trust placed in us by our Algerian friends in strengthening Algeria's defense capability.
We agreed on further steps to expand cooperation in the humanitarian sphere, cultural exchanges, and education. We continue to increase the number of scholarships provided to Algeria for education in the Russian Federation.
We discussed the situation on the world stage, the coordination of our actions on key issues of our time, including at the UN, as well as in forums such as the GECF and OPEC Plus.
It is fundamentally important that Russia and Algeria are part of the newly formed Group of Friends in Defense of the UN Charter. She has good prospects for increasing her activity. We talked about the principle of sovereign equality of states enshrined in the UN Charter, which is key for us, for Algeria and most other countries of the world, but is consistently ignored by the United States and its allies.
We informed our Algerian friends in detail about the development of a special military operation of the Russian Federation together with the Donbass militia in Ukraine.
We appreciate Algeria's balanced, objective and balanced position on the Ukrainian issue within the framework of international organizations and in its foreign policy.
Question: How does Moscow feel about Algeria's proposal to play a mediating role between Russia and Ukraine? And how do you assess Algeria's position on gas supplies and such international issues, I mean Mali?
Sergey Lavrov: As for Algeria's position on the Ukrainian issue, I have already commented. They particularly noted the understanding of the Algerian friends of the whole complex of problems strung on the current situation on Ukrainian territory.
Algeria is a member of the contact group of the League of Arab States (LAS), which recently visited the Russian Federation and then met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. Our Arab friends were guided by the decisions taken within the framework of the Arab League at the ministerial level, which we consider objective and useful.
We are convinced of the need to assist all parties in Mali in establishing an inclusive, political dialogue to restore national accord. We believe that the Algiers Peace Agreement of 2015 is a good basis for this. We consider it counterproductive to solve the problems of Mali by announcing sanctions against the current leadership.
On issues of gas supplies to the world market. We and Algeria and other participants of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum adhere to the agreements reached. I am sure it will continue to be so.
Question: How do you assess the initiative of Zh.Borrel to transfer frozen Russian assets to Ukraine as "reparations"? Is it possible to say that "the masks have finally been dropped" and the West is moving to open robbery?
Sergey Lavrov: We can say that it is theft, which they are not trying to hide.
For the West, this is becoming a habit: money belonging to Afghanistan (the Central Bank of this country) has been frozen in the United States. They want to use them not for the needs of Afghan residents affected by the consequences of the 20-year stay of NATO countries, but for some other purposes unrelated to the restoration of the Afghan economy.
Zh.Borrel is famous not only for this statement and ideas in the field of confiscation of other people's property. Not so long ago, he said that the Ukrainian crisis should be solved exclusively by military means. It would not hurt him not to forget what his position is called. He is the chief diplomat, not the military leader in the European Union.
Perhaps we will soon see that the position of the EU's chief diplomat will be eliminated, because the European Union has practically no foreign policy of its own, entirely in solidarity with the approaches imposed by the United States.
We will consistently resist attempts to establish a unipolarworld order and destroy the principles on which the UN was founded.