Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov told Hungary’s Magyar Nemzet newspaper that the current crisis in relations between Russia and the EU was the result of persistent unwillingness of partners to build a dialogue on the basis of true partnership. The text of interview is published on the official website of the Russian MFA.

Lavrov stated that unfortunately, a short-sighted line towards seizing geopolitical space has prevailed in Brussels, including through the implementation of the initiative of Eastern Partnership on the division of peoples to “ours "and" others ". Revolution in Ukraine supported by a number of EU countries became the culmination of such a course. He also mentioned that the Ukrainian crisis highlighted a high degree of the EU dependence on the political and economic influence of Washington.

Lavrov expressed confidence that no reasonable alternative to a mutually beneficial partnership between Russia and the European Union exists.

"Russia has repeatedly expressed readiness to cooperate with the EU on a broad range of issues - from abolition of short-term visas to rapprochement in the energy sector", he mentioned, TASS reported. 

At the same time Lavrov noted that business should not be as usual when they tried to impose cooperation schemes that do not meet Russian interests or to put before the come true facts.

Lavrov said that they are still confident that  gradual establishment of economic and humanitarian cooperation in the area from the Atlantic to the Pacific which is based on the architecture of equal and indivisible security, stems from mutual interests. Harmonization of processes of the European and Eurasian integration would be an important step in this direction.