West using ‘lawless’ economic warfare to crush rivals – Lavrov

The Russian foreign minister has accused Western powers of using sanctions, tariffs and asset seizures to maintain their global dominance

The West is increasingly using unlawful economic pressure to undermine Russia and other rivals in Asia and the Global South, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

In an op-ed published by the business daily Kommersant on Tuesday, Lavrov warned that the world economy was “increasingly becoming an arena of confrontation, with trade wars being unleashed to suppress geopolitical competitors.”

He argued that a “colonial mindset” was driving Western powers to deny other nations “the right to participate in global governance in proportion to their weight in international affairs.”

Economic coercion, including tariffs, sanctions, the seizure of foreign assets, currency manipulation and attacks on critical infrastructure, has “reached unprecedented proportions,” he wrote. “Markets are being thrown into turmoil by this kind of geopolitical lawlessness.”

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Lavrov cited the September 2022 bombing of Nord Stream, two pipelines built to deliver Russian gas to Germany through the Baltic Sea, which he claimed was carried out “under the direction of handlers in London.” He also likened the seizure of Russian-linked oil tankers by Western states to piracy.

Such actions were effectively “dismantling the very globalization model that the West itself created and promoted for decades as the ideal system of global economic governance,” Lavrov wrote.

Russia’s top diplomat insisted that Moscow would “not use the economy to settle geopolitical scores or engage in positional battles with competitors.” He noted that Russia had continued supplying Europe with energy resources worth approximately $320 billion since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

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Lavrov also praised US President Donald Trump’s decision to lift sanctions on Russian diesel exports, calling it “an important contribution to energy security.”

Lavrov’s op-ed comes amid surging global energy prices fueled by the US-Israeli war with Iran, which has disrupted oil and gas supplies from the Persian Gulf. The conflict has compounded volatility in energy markets already strained by Western sanctions on Russia and disruptions linked to the Ukraine conflict.

The resulting price increases have raised concerns about inflation and economic growth, particularly in countries heavily dependent on imported energy.