MOSCOW Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says that there is no return to the former normal in the relations between Russia and Finland, even if the relations will at some point begin to be corrected from the current state.
– Naturally, if we discuss the framework of new relations, we will fully take into account Finland’s changed status. I mean Finland’s accession to NATO and the document signed with NATO, which also allows the deployment of NATO’s military infrastructure on Finnish territory, Lavrov said.
– We cannot ignore it, and there will probably be no return to business as usual.
Lavrov answered ‘s question about relations between Finland and Russia at his press conference.
At the moment, relations are blocked by Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, but as expected, Lavrov did not consider the war to be the reason for Finland’s change of attitude.
– Relationships didn’t just fall apart in their own time. They were torn up by the Finnish government, which suddenly abandoned the long traditions of good neighborliness and mutually beneficial cooperation, Lavrov accused.
According to the narrative repeated by the Russian leadership, the war was unleashed by the West, which is only using Ukraine as a proxy against Russia.
Lavrov: In diplomacy, there is no need for the number of contacts during normal hours
In the same tone, Lavrov also discussed the difficulties faced by the Finnish and Russian embassies in banking connections, among other things.
Russia has frozen the accounts of the Finnish embassies and justified the actions with the difficulties that the Russian embassies have in Finland.
This month, the Consulate General of Finland in St. Petersburg suffered interruptions in mobile phone connections. The outages were precisely related to difficulties with bank payments.
Foreign Minister Lavrov did not comment on whether there are any discussions to solve the problems.
– We were not the initiators of the sharp deterioration of relations between our countries, for example in the field of diplomacy, Lavrov said.
– To be honest, I don’t see the need for such a number of diplomatic contacts as in normal times – before the West declared war on us through the Ukrainian Nazi regime, Lavrov said.
Russia claims that a Nazi regime oppressing the Russian-speaking population is in power in Ukraine, even though, for example, the president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi is a Jew whose mother tongue is Russian.
Answering a question from the Russian Kommersant newspaper about cooperation in the Arctic region, Lavrov praised the Arctic Council as a good non-political form of cooperation. The West is ruining that too, Lavrov complained.
– Discussions have started to take place that a role should also be found for NATO to guarantee maritime safety.
Lavrov said that the safety of shipping in the Northeast Passage is guaranteed by Russia.
– The lion’s share of its length is in our territorial waters and we are responsible for its safety.
Lavrov said that there are no such issues for the Arctic region, the solution of which would require the display of military force.
Then he returned to NATO again.
– But NATO’s appetite is growing. It ate Finland and is trying to persuade Sweden not to burn Korans so that it can be fished into the North Atlantic Alliance as soon as possible, the Russian foreign minister said.
– These processes do not inspire optimism, and we will respond to them with military technical measures, Lavrov warned.
Russia is now seeking sympathy from outside the West
At the press conference, Lavrov presented the idea that the UN Security Council should be expanded so that the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America would get more representation there.
Lavrov’s idea is unlikely to go anywhere in the conditions of the current confrontation, and he is surely well aware of it.
In its foreign policy rhetoric, Russia tries to appeal to the world outside the “collective West”.
In it, it takes advantage of the dissatisfaction of the countries of the so-called global south with the excessive influence of the Western powers in world politics.
Lavrov referred to Western countries with the term “golden billion”. The term comes from a conspiracy theory that a secret society of global elites is working to amass wealth for the richest billion people at the expense of the rest of humanity.