Pretoria - The West’s 500 years of global domination based on military superiority is coming to an end, says Ambassador of the Russian Federation to South Africa Ilya Rogachev.
He added that the rise of the BRICS (China, Russia, Brazil, India and South Africa) bloc is ushering in a new world built on equal partnership among sovereign and independent states.
In an exclusive interview with the Pretoria News last week, Rogachev said whether Moscow succeeded with its goals in Ukraine would not change the fact that a unpopular world dominated by America and its European partners was over.
Elaborating on a recent statement by Russian President Vladimir Putin at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, Rogachev maintained that there was no return to the Western-dominated world order, even after the Ukraine war.
Western powers had to accept that the trend towards a new multi-polar world order was an objective and a global one. In the new order, countries would decide their own socio-economic, political and development paths. They would also respect each other’s sovereignty rather than impose their will through the barrel of a gun or economic sanctions, as does the US, Rogachev said.
“The new world order will be modelled on BRICS, which is a group of states that take independent sovereign decisions that would like to carry on both external and internal politics, where decisions are taken on the basis of national interests, their own people, their own countries, not somebody else’s. That would be a world of independent, sovereign states that respect each other’s interests, that do not impose interests of their own on others, that respect international law, and do not live in some rules based order. What rules, established by whom, where, when and so on,” Rogachev said.
Rogachev’s statement came amid a fallout between Russia and the West over the Ukraine war, as well as rising tensions between the US and China over the future of Taiwan.
The West has accused Russia of attacking Ukraine in a bid to rebuild its former empire. Russia has denied this, saying Ukraine posed an existential threat to the country because it was being used by Western powers to neutralise Moscow and expand the eastern frontier of Nato, the US-led military alliance. Tensions between the US and China also reached boiling point recently after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defiantly visited Taiwan against the wishes of Beijing, in a move described by Russia as a provocation.
In response, China conducted live fire military drills in and around Taiwan. Earlier, Chinese President Xi Jinping had warned US President Joe Biden against “playing with fire” by encouraging Taiwan’s independence.
The rivalry between the US and Russian extended to Africa when US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken visited SA this past week, as part of an Africa tour, a few weeks after Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov did the same.
Rogachev insisted that the West’s deteriorating relationship with Russia and China was a response to its waning global power and influence.
“There is no such thing as military superiority at this point in time. They are afraid of what’s coming because for 500 years the West was using its dominant positions to redistribute the world’s produce in its favour in many different ways, particularly slavery, through colonialism, neo-colonialism,” he added.
Rogachev said the West’s response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine, including their supply of weapons, was part of their struggle to “preserve” world dominance.
“It doesn’t really matter whether the Russian military operation in Ukraine will be successful because the trend will continue in other places, and in other forms and manifestations. They apparently think this is a decisive battle, this is the crucial one. It’s either them or us. Either they preserve their world dominance or the world will become different. It’s a sign of hysteria, desperation.”
Spokesperson for the US Embassy in South Africa, David Feldman, referred enquiries to his deputy, Samidha Redkar, saying he was on leave. Redkar failed to respond to questions emailed for comment on Rogachev’s statement.
Rogachev said Moscow was “compelled to launch a military offensive” on Ukraine after the neighbouring country had ignored warnings for 15 years that it posed an existential threat to Russia.
“Ukraine as part of Nato was way too dangerous and threatening to Russia in particular because Ukrainian leaders were ready to provide their territory, basically they did it already, naval bases were about to appear on the Black Sea, Ukrainian coast, Nato troops were about to appear in Ukraine, in particular with missiles and that was unacceptable,” Rogachev added.
He rejected accusations by Western leaders that Russia had committed war crimes in Ukraine. He said it was Ukraine’s own leaders and military, especially the notorious Azov Battalion, which was guilty of this in eastern Ukraine. He said they used civilians as human shields and installed military weapons in residential areas to spread propaganda that Russia was shelling civilians.
“What Ukranians do, they put military equipment close to shopping malls, schools, kindergartens, hospitals, and even in the residential areas. They put organised gun posts on the rooftops or on the upper floors of the multi-storey buildings and then they keep residents, they lock them in, on the lower floors. They let the Russian military know about this, they say if you shell here, you will kill civilians,” he said.
The Russian ambassador also dismissed as “nonsense” claims by EU leaders that Russia had weaponised gas and oil.
“It is a complete distortion of facts because all the sanctions against Russia prove that it was the West that uses economic tools as military weapons. In their own words, they wanted to deprive Russia of the possibility to trade fossil fuels to harm the country, to reduce its military capacity. So, we never did that.”
Pretoria News