MOSCOW - Russia is negative about the Eastern Partnership set to be held in Riga in May and believes the event is clearly anti-Russian, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
“We are very negative about it. We will, of course, follow the Riga summit, but it is already obvious that our reaction will be very tough and principled because we see where this partnership is going and what coloring it is acquiring, bearing in mind the positions of the participants in this program, primarily, from the EU side,” Russian Foreign Ministry official Alexander Lukashevich told a briefing in Moscow on April 24.
“It is important that the essence of this partnership has a clearly anti-Russian coloring,” he said.
Latvia, which chairs the EU, will host the Eastern Partnership summit in Riga on May 21-22.
Eastern Partnership is a European Union project. Its main stated purpose is to develop integration between the EU and six countries of the former USSR (Ukraine, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia and Belarus).
The main priorities of reforms in the partner countries and their cooperation with the EU are declared as follows: democracy, improvement of the administration system and ensuring stability; economic integration and convergence with the EU industry economic polices, including the creation of free trade zones; energy security; development of contacts between people (liberalization of the visa regime and intensification of the fight against illegal immigration).
