Commentary: Russia's Fair Diplomacy, Will the West Abandon Double Standards?
President of Russia Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have both sent positive and cooperative signals to Washington for improving bilateral relations amidst the urgency of combating terrorism which is a global menace.
President Putin has talked on the phone with United States President-elect Donald Trump, an indication that there is a better outlook for US and Russia relations.
But as Russia intensifies its genuine efforts to fight the Islamic State movement, there are misleading accusations in the West about what Russia is doing.
Groundless demonization of Russia and misinterpretation of its foreign policy is an old trick of the Western politicians. The reason behind it is to switch the public focus away from their own real and outrageous violations of international law and corrupt policies.
There are plenty of examples to prove this. The most vivid one now is Syria. The West has spread a false thesis that Russia came to Syria not to fight against terrorism, but to “save Assad’s regime.”
However, the reality is that Russia has been cooperating with the legitimate government of the sovereign state of Syria in full compliance with international law.
The goal is to eliminate IS, Jabhat al-Nusra and others of the same kind, identified as terrorist groups by the UnitedNations Security Council.
In response to the official request from the Syrian authorities, the Russian Aerospace Forces in Syria have been operating professionally and effectively, targeting terrorists and their infrastructure only.
That being said, Russia’s objective in Syria is to assist the legitimate government of their country to eradicate terrorism in its territory and to help the Syrians — both the government and the opposition — to establish an inclusive dialogue in order to choose their future political system and leader.
This is all in stark contrast with the policies of US President Barack Obama’s administration and other Western governments?
Clearly, they seem to not only aim to combat terrorism in Syria but appear to want to overthrow its legitimate president. Otherwise, there is no explanation for the fact that the US Air Force has been carrying out operations in Syria without consent from the Syrian government, which is in violation of the international law.
The same applies to the inability, or, what is best described as the unwillingness of Americans to fulfil their promise to separate the so-called “moderate opposition” from the terrorists, including those of Jabhat al-Nusra in the war-torn Aleppo.
It appears that someone has been protecting this terrorist group — which is banned in Russia by the way — from strikes by shielding it with the view to use this force to throw down the legitimate authorities in Syria.
Another example is southeastern Ukraine. The war there was suspended only due to the efforts of the international community with the active role of Russia.
That war was unleashed by the Ukrainian authorities against its citizens who didn’t accept the illegitimate change of power resulting from an armed coup back in 2014.
And it is not Moscow, as the West argues, it is exactly those rulers in Kiev who have been hampering the progress of the Minsk Agreements on political settlement in southeastern Ukraine. In fact, they refuse to observe key provisions of the Minsk Plan, namely to secure the special status of certain territories within the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, to propose legislation granting amnesty and to hold local elections.
The West appears to force its Kiev clients to follow those obligations in a very relaxed manner. No surprise here, it was not Russia but the Western countries who supported and sponsored above mentioned change of power in Ukraine more than two years ago.
Finally, the most fresh and, let me say, ridiculous example of the anti-Russian propaganda is the myth about the “interference” of Moscow into the US presidential election in order to supposedly damage one of the candidates.
As it always happens in such cases, Washington hasn’t provided any evidence to prove these allegations.
A logical question then follows, do Americans really think that the internal affairs of their country can be penetrated so easily, including through hacking their IT infrastructure? Is it really possible in a country that assumes the role of an exceptional world leader in advanced cyber-technology?
Indeed, the West uses every kind of sophisticated propaganda for the sake of discrediting Russia.
Seemingly, our Western partners feel uncomfortable with the fact that Russia openly condemns their unfair methods by citing interference, including the unreasonable use of force into internal affairs of independent states aimed at changing governments, imposing political and socio-economic models on other countries, using extremists to achieve goals and the list goes on.
I sincerely hope that our Indonesian friends will take a critical stance towards the Western propaganda cliches regarding Russia because of their obvious inconsistency.
I also believe that reasonable forces will eventually appear in the West who will choose the path of fruitful cooperation– a departure from meaningless confrontation with Russia.
Mikhail Galuzin is Russia's ambassador to Indonesia.
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