Russia is planning a major switch in foreign policy which would aim to improve ties with the West to increase foreign investment in the country, the Russian edition of Newsweek reported yesterday.
A new foreign policy doctrine, approved by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, aims to make Russia’s foreign policy more pragmatic to attract urgently needed international capital for modernizing the country, the weekly said.
Entitled “The Program for Effective Use of Foreign Policy in the Long-Term Development of Russia,” the doctrine says Russia must strengthen relations with the US and the EU to achieve its economic goals.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov wrote in the introduction that the best way to ensure ure Russian interests is to rapidly realize modernization in Russia, a flagship project of Medvedev.
Russia needs to forge “modernizing alliances” with Western Europe and the EU to attract foreign capital, Lavrov wrote in the doctrine, the entire text of which was posted on the Newsweek Web site.
Meanwhile, Russia will need to exploit the US’ technological potential and end restrictions on the transfer of American technology to Russia, he said.
“The greatest importance will be attached to the … strengthening of relations of mutual dependence with leading world and regional powers based on mutual penetration of economy and culture,” Lavrov wrote.
Lavrov lauded the “transforming potential” of US President Barack Obama, but warned that elements in the US foreign policy establishment were seeking to force him to a more confrontational stance.
Newsweek said that doctrine would mark a major shift by Russia to a more pragmatic foreign policy after years of prickly relations with the EU and US.
“The economic crisis showed that we cannot develop Russia on our own,” a foreign ministry source told the weekly. “We are going to have to rely on someone.”
Officials from the foreign ministry could not be immediately reached for comment.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees