On December 22, 2022, a briefing was held by the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, M.V. Zakharova, on current foreign policy issues.
The briefing was attended by the Editor-in-chief of the online publication “Embassy Life” – Marat Shakirzyanov.
Marat Shakirzyanov asked a question:
Good afternoon, Maria Vladimirovna! Good afternoon, colleagues!
What recommendations can you give to your foreign colleagues on building interaction with Russia to achieve positive interaction and agreement? Maybe they misunderstand our proposals?
Maria Zakharova’s response:
It seems to me that this is the theme of the millennium. Let’s narrow down our task, or at least narrow down some contours.
Our BRICS, SCO and CSTO colleagues, partners from ASEAN, Africa, and the Arab world traditionally build their relations with Russia on the basis of good neighborliness and mutual respect. All this has an international legal basis.
Can the West go the same way? Alas, the professional degradation of the political elites of the Euro-Atlantic is a “calling card” and one of the signs of our time. There is an increasingly noticeable gap between the way of thinking, the level of training characteristic of the leaders of Western countries during the Cold War, and the style of behavior of the new generation of Western politicians.
Real diplomacy, I would like to remind you about this, is not reading out the same theses during meetings of international organizations, albeit with variations. These are not monosyllabic slogans on social networks with variations of hashtags. Real diplomacy is the art of understanding the national interests, concerns, historical and cultural roots of your partners. This is the art of dialogue and finding a balance of interests.
Russia, unlike the current West, is open to honest dialogue and always stands for political methods of resolving controversial situations.
Actually, I gave the advice.
