MOSCOW - Russia has never rejected cooperation and partnership with the West, including Germany, but Russia also hopes for mutual respect, Konstantin Kosachyov, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia's parliament, told Interfax.
“We have never rejected a partnership with European countries. It was not Russia that introduced sanctions. It was not Russia that rejected interaction with NATO. It was not Russia that refused to discuss the most acute topics, including the Ukrainian crisis at its most initial stages, when discussions on gas transit were underway in the trilateral format. But the world order in which Russia is not seen as a partner today is based on the West’s main formula – ‘what is good for the West is good for all’,” Kosachyov said.
The Russian senator said this when commenting on German media reports that the German Defense Ministry had included Russia in the list of ten major threats and had called Russia a rival rather than a partner.
“Russia by no means rejects a partnership with Germany or with any other state of Europe,” Kosachyov said.
“It is simply that a partnership envisages the sole crucial condition – mutual respect. If you consider your conditions to be the only right ones and your interests the only possible ones such a partnership will be inherently doomed,” Kosachyov said.
Kosachyov is on the sanction list adopted by Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council.
