Lavrov: under Trump, the US is continuing “the very same line” that Biden started

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that Washington under President Donald Trump is continuing the course of the Joe Biden administration toward Russia, despite the declared prospects for cooperation. He made the statement in an interview with RT India.

According to Lavrov, Trump has repeatedly called the Ukrainian conflict “Joe Biden’s war, not his war.” Russia, the minister said, values the fact that the current US president has initiated a dialogue with Moscow, but that is where the positive changes end.

“In practice, apart from this regular dialogue — which is normal in communication between people and states — everything else is the very same line that Biden started. All the sanctions against Russia adopted under him remain in force. Moreover, the Trump administration is already taking its own initiatives to economically ‘punish’ Russia,” Lavrov said.

The minister also mentioned contacts between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump, as well as talks between representatives of the two countries’ foreign policy departments. Commenting on US sanctions against Russian oil companies and the related reduction in oil supplies to India, Lavrov said that New Delhi “has nothing to do with it” and that the restrictions were imposed by Washington “under the pretext of Ukraine.”

Earlier, speaking at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in April, Lavrov spoke of a large number of disagreements with the current American administration and noted that US authorities do not conceal their goal — “US dominance in global energy markets.”

The head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s foreign policy planning department, Alexei Drobinin, in turn, said in an interview with the Serbian newspaper Politika that Russian-American relations are still far from normalization, but that the Trump administration has made a move toward restoring bilateral dialogue.

In September of last year, Lavrov also stated that Trump seeks to conclude profitable deals and projects, but is being hindered by the “deep state” and representatives of the Democratic Party.