2 Mar 2022 19:48

Lavrov describes West's freeze on Russian Central Bank's assets as theft

MOSCOW. March 2 (Interfax) - The West's freeze on the Russian Central Bank's and Russian private companies' assets is nothing but theft, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

"They've simply tossed out all their principles they've been imposing on the international arena, including when they started freezing assets of the Russian Central Bank and our private companies. That's nothing but theft," Lavrov said in an interview with Al Jazeera.

"They [the West] have rejected all the rules that they've been incorporating in international affairs over the past 70 years," Lavrov said.

"They have simply dashed these rules now and have returned to the thuggish wild capitalism of the Gold Rush era," Lavrov said.

He said he was stunned by the fact that the Western sanctions have been extended also to the sports and cultural fields.

"You should understand that, in previous years, when they declared sanctions against Arab and Latin American countries, the West regularly insisted, at least at the [UN] Security Council, that the sanctions were not targeted against ordinary people, but that the sanctions were intended for the leadership of a relevant state to feel the international community's pressure and change its behavior. Nobody is even speaking about this now," he said.

"We are capable of withstanding any pressure. If someone has any doubts about that, I recommend studying Russia's history, the Russian Empire's and the Soviet Union's history, and those periods in our life when we were assaulted by enemy armies," he said.