At a press conference after talks with Kazakhstan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mujtar Tleuberdi, the Russian Foreign Minister assured that his country will respond if the White House imposes new sanctions against him.

He said that, in his opinion, statements by State Department representatives about Washington’s interest in fostering stable relations with Moscow sound unconvincing. ‘We will wait for concrete actions,’ he added.

Lavrov drew attention to reports of a possible appointment of a US special envoy who will be in charge of negotiations aimed at avoiding the conclusion of works on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany.

‘He will just go and threaten everyone. This is the kind of diplomacy’, he explained, calling Washington’s policy of sanctions against Moscow a ‘dead end’ and ‘stupid ‘.

The head of Russian diplomacy indicated that such a strategy increasingly causes rejection in the United States itself. ‘A structure as pro-Washington as the non-government organization Atlantic Council is already publishing materials that criticize this absolutely dead-end line from the United States to Russia’, he stressed.

Lavrov said that such actions ‘convince us that we must trust ourselves, because neither the United States nor its allies are reliable partners.’

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