Moscow. March 12. INTERFAX.EN - After the start of the Russian special operation in Ukraine and the subsequent Western sanctions against Russia, Moscow's relations with the European Union and NATO are experiencing an unprecedented crisis in severity. Nikolay Kobrinets, Director of the Department of Pan-European Cooperation of the Russian Foreign Ministry, told Interfax in a written interview about how the current situation is assessed by the Russian side.
- Brussels has introduced new restrictive measures against several hundred Russian citizens, including the country's top leadership. Is there already an understanding of how we plan to respond to this, will these measures be mirrored and proportional?
- In the period 2014-2021, the so-called "personal" sanctions of the European Union against Russian citizens were expanded nine times. In total, over the past 8 years, the European Union has adopted as many as 49 "packages" of sanctions against our country - personal, sectoral (economic), special "Crimean" ones, for allegedly using chemical weapons, cyber attacks and for any reason and for no reason. It seems that in Brussels they are already getting confused in all these "packages".
As of February 24 of this year, there were about 150 Russians on the EU restrictive lists. To date, there are more than 800 of them. The growth in less than a month is more than five times. Their compilers are just some "Stakhanovites". It seems that there are no words other than "sanctions" left in the vocabulary of Brussels officials.
At the same time, the fact that according to opinion polls (VTsIOM), more than 70% of citizens of our country support the decision to conduct a special military operation in Ukraine is carefully hushed up. The economic sanctions of recent weeks against us are proudly called "crippling" by the EU. This is the first time we have seen such frankness. It is recognized that sanctions are imposed not against the Russian leadership, but against the entire Russian people. The EU "supermen" believe that they have the right to "punish" negligent Russians who do not want to accept dubious Western "values" and live by someone else's rules.
Our citizens who are now in Western Europe - for study, treatment, on the family line, are subjected to derogatory treatment, insults, moral and psychological, and even physical violence. Burghers and bourgeois once again believed in their exclusivity, in the theory of racial superiority. They consider themselves the lights of democracy and human rights, and at the everyday level they behave abominably towards Russians. Their historical memory turned out to be very short. But in vain.
The February "EU sanctions" are really aimed at the top leadership of our country, members of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, heads of federal executive authorities, entrepreneurs, and journalists.
Our retaliatory measures will definitely be taken, they are being worked out now. We are not obliged to make them mirror-like and strictly proportional. Although numerical parity is not difficult to restore. On March 1 of this year, 637 deputies voted for the resolution of the European Parliament "Russian aggression against Ukraine". Anyone can be included in our response "stop list".
EU personal "sanctions" were prepared and executed by Brussels bureaucrats. But the member countries voted for them. So let Brussels and the EU capitals not be surprised if our response list includes senior leaders of the European Union, member states, parliamentarians, all kinds of fake news producers. We have all the reasons for this – their rabid Russophobia, whipping up anti-Russian hysteria, attempts to damage the political and economic interests of our country, interference in Russia's internal affairs, including calls to undermine the constitutional foundations of our country.
- The West is actively discussing the possibility of abandoning Russian energy carriers in favor of alternative sources of gas supplies. Will the European Union survive without our gas, how painful will it be for it? The Russian side has calculated such a step on the part of the West among possible restrictions, and are we ready for it if such a decision is made?
- According to the European Commission itself, the EU imports 90% of gas, of which about half is provided by Russia. Our country also accounts for about 25% of oil imports and 45% of coal to Europe. So they cannot fail to understand their vulnerability in Brussels.
Nevertheless, on March 8 of this year, European Commission President Ursula von der Lein said that she hopes to reduce the EU's demand for gas from Russia by two-thirds by the end of 2022, and make Europe completely independent of energy from Russia "much earlier" than 2030, as previously planned. And, judging by the statements, at any cost. Which, as usual, will have to be paid not to the top of the European bureaucracy, but to ordinary European taxpayers.
Serious experts believe that LNG, including American LNG, will not be able to replace Russian gas in Europe in the coming years. And you need to warm up every winter. Costs are increasing for the entire economy. EU plans include the development of hydrogen production projects, the development of alternative energy sources (and the weather can be capricious). All this will take time and investment. From a purely economic point of view, the plans are not very rational. There is turbulence, if not panic, in the global energy markets. It is unknown to what level prices will soar. But it is already clear that the EU citizens will have to pay three times the price for gas, oil and electricity, if not more. It's their choice.
Russia remains a reliable supplier, a guarantor of world-class energy security. We value this reputation, but we are ready for a tough confrontation in the energy sphere, if necessary. I think the European Union will definitely not benefit from it – we have a greater margin of safety and stronger nerves.
- Do you think that the anti-Russian measures taken by the European Union in recent days are reversible, or can our cooperation with Europe be "put an end to"?
- I will not undertake to predict - on the one hand there are no miracles, on the other - nothing can be excluded. The European Union is increasingly driving itself into a corner – it is not difficult to enter the sanctions spiral, it is extremely difficult to get out of it. At least because there is a well-known vociferous anti-Russian (even at a subconscious level) minority in the EU, which will not allow more rationally minded countries to do this.
In fact, with its convulsive sanctions decisions, the Western leadership not only limits its own opportunities to get out of the pandemic recession. It strikes at the entire global economic, transport and logistics system. Without thinking in the least about the consequences and the inevitable responsibility for the steps taken - first of all before their constituents.
There is another problem. The European Union boasts that it coordinates all its anti-Russian steps with the United States, Great Britain and other smaller American satellites. In fact, we are not talking about some kind of coordination of positions or coordination. The EU's Brussels simply receives instructions from Washington, where the European Union, like Ukraine, is seen as an instrument of deterrence of our country. The EU is not independent in its foreign policy. Their application for so-called "strategic autonomy" is nothing more than a figure of speech. Nothing really happens. And it is unlikely to happen. Americans don't need it.
- Taking into account the forced reduction of contacts through the EU, is there a possibility of transferring relations to a bilateral basis with those European countries that will be interested in this?
- Russia's real cooperation with the EU countries on most issues of the trade and economic agenda after 2014, by and large, if it was carried out, it was only on a bilateral line. European institutions (European Commission, European Parliament)
at best, they withdrew themselves, at worst they actively hindered and continue to hinder him. The position is absolutely counterproductive. Over the past almost eight years, when we actually had no normal dialogue with the European Union in the field of energy, climate, healthcare, trade, and investment, not only new problems and misunderstandings have emerged that require appropriate settlement, but also new, global challenges have arisen, which it is preferable to respond to by joint efforts.
In recent years, the European Union has been less and less willing to take Russia's opinion into account when developing its thematic strategies - be it digitalization, the use of hydrogen raw materials or the introduction of artificial intelligence technologies. They are ready to involve us in their politics, but only if we are ready to play by EU rules. Now the question of the need to get rid of "dependence on Russia" is being increasingly raised.
Even in the best years, we have never opposed the development of our relations with the European Union to the maintenance of traditional mutually beneficial trade, economic, cultural and humanitarian ties with its individual members. They have always rejected accusations against us of trying to split the EU ranks. Here, the EU members intimidate themselves. We are ready to cooperate with all states and their associations on an equal pragmatic basis, respecting each other's interests and observing the rules of normal (without moralizing) interstate communication.
- In the case of the implementation of NATO measures to strengthen the "eastern flank", will it be possible to say that we actually no longer need the Russia-NATO Founding Act?
- To begin with, a few facts. During a meeting of NATO foreign ministers on March 4 this year, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that more than 130 alliance aircraft and 200 ships, including three aircraft carrier strike groups, are on high alert.
In 2021, the number of sorties in the Black Sea region increased from 436 to 710 compared to 2020. In 2021, US strategic bombers flew 92 times in the airspace of the Black Sea region with access to the conditional boundary of the use of cruise missiles. At least 30 major military and command and staff exercises are held annually in the immediate vicinity of the borders of the Russian Federation. An American Aegis Eshor missile defense system with 24 SM-3 ground-based interceptor missiles has been deployed in the Romanian settlement of Deveselu. A similar system is expected to be put into operation in the Polish village of Redzikovo in 2023.
The Russian side proceeds from the fact that the strengthening of the "eastern flank" contradicts the 1997 Russia-NATO Founding Act, in which the North Atlantic Bloc confirmed that "in the current and foreseeable security conditions, the alliance will carry out its collective defense and other tasks through ensuring the necessary compatibility, integration and reinforcement potential, and not through additional permanent the deployment of substantial combat forces." NATO members have been openly cheating around the term "substantial combat forces" for many years. Their additional contingents in the Baltic States and Poland are formally deployed on a rotational, but in fact on a permanent basis and brought to the level of full readiness.
Taking into account the above, we can say that NATO's actions undermine the Fundamental Act of Russia-NATO. And this is the last remaining instrument in Europe to ensure military restraint - after the Americans refused to ratify the adapted CFE Treaty, they destroyed the INF Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty. But the de facto Founding Act, admittedly, is not working now.
- Do we maintain any communication channels with NATO and, if so, how effective are they? In what practical areas is dialogue still possible?
- In recent years, NATO's relations with Russia have dropped to zero through the alliance's fault. By refusing to discuss topical security issues, the North Atlantic Bloc has leveled the importance of the Russia-NATO Council as an all-weather mechanism for consultations in crisis situations.
In 2014, after the coup in Ukraine, the alliance decided to suspend all practical civil and military cooperation
with Russia. All joint projects have been stopped. At the meetings of the NRC resumed in 2016, the North Atlantic Bloc put discussion of Ukrainian issues as a prerequisite, although this is not its business. He ignored our proposals on de-escalation and transparency of military activities.
On October 6, 2021, the alliance decided to revoke the accreditation of 8 employees of the Permanent Mission of Russia to NATO, as well as to reduce the size of the diplomatic mission to 10 people. This was the third reduction of the Russian Permanent Mission (the previous ones in 2015 and 2018). In the absence of proper conditions for carrying out diplomatic activities, Russia suspended the work of the Permanent Mission to NATO, as well as the activities of the alliance's Military Liaison Mission in Moscow. The activities of the NATO Information Office in the Russian capital have been discontinued.
Today, emergency contacts with the alliance headquarters are maintained through the Russian Ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium. The military attache in Brussels keeps in touch via the military line. Through these channels we receive messages from the NATO Secretary General, requests for possible contacts.
Currently, the countries of the alliance (and, more broadly, the European Union), ignoring international rules and their own codes of conduct, supply lethal weapons for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Weapons designed to kill Russian servicemen. There can be no talk of any dialogue with NATO in these conditions.