Hoffnungsvolle Töne von Lawrow?

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Steinmeier in New York

Vor allem fürs Archiv: Zum Verhältnis zwischen Russland und dem Westen, insbesondere den USA, dominiert in Deutschland derzeit eine Formulierung aus einem Interview des russischen Außenministers Sergej Lawrow im russischen Kanal 5 die Berichterstattung, zum  Beispiel bei der Deutschen Welle:

Beim ersten Mal ist es misslungen, nun soll ein zweiter Versuch glücken: Russlands Außenminister will den „Sanktionskrieg“ mit dem Westen beenden und die Beziehungen zu den USA neu starten.
„Es ist jetzt das nötig, was die Amerikaner wohl ‚Reset‘ nennen“, sagte Außenminister Sergej Lawrow im russischen Fernsehsender Kanal 5. Russland sei für eine Normalisierung des Verhältnisses sowie für eine Neuauflage der früheren Politik von US-Präsident Barack Obama. Vielleicht könne es einen „Neustart 2.0“ geben, sagte Lawrow.

Ein anderes Interview mit Lawrow findet dagegen weniger Beachtung: Es wurde geführt vom russischen Auslandskanal Russia Today und einer Zeitungsgruppe. Darin sind ein paar Aussagen, die härter klingen:

I very much hope that the US will finally see the light and realize that they can no longer act as the prosecutor, the judge, and the executioner in every part of the world and that they need to cooperate to resolve issues. As you can see, they began fighting terrorists only when their own citizens were beheaded and that footage was made public. We had warned them long ago that the US should not support those forces only because they are fighting Assad in Syria. So they declared this war on terror and their plans to defeat ISIS. And they had to build a broad coalition – they realize the mission required a political and military alliance. The proper way to do it would have been to put the issue up at the UN Security Council and to cooperate with the Syrian government which had long declared they were ready to cooperate with the international community in fighting terrorism. But the US picked a different path. This is wrong, and doesn’t add legitimacy to the process.

(…)

If a cold war starts today, I think it will be different. It will be primarily a media war. Of course, the Cold War we know used the media as well. But that was nothing compared to what you can do with the media today, with the Internet and all that comes with it. But in my contacts with John Kerry and with the foreign ministers of Germany, France and many other European countries, I can see that they don’t particularly enjoy the current situation but they simply can’t abandon the position they’ve taken, namely, that it’s all Russia’s fault, that it was Russia who brought about the Ukraine crisis.

(…)

I don’t think we are on the verge of a new arms race. At least, Russia definitely won’t be part of it. In our case, it’s just that the time has come for us to modernize our nuclear and conventional arsenals. We have a long-term armament program, which takes into account our economic situation and, of course, the need to have efficient and modern defensive capabilities to protect our national interest. It is not super-expensive, and besides, like I said, we haven’t been doing much in this regard for a number of years. The US nuclear arsenal is somewhat younger than ours but perhaps it is also time for them to upgrade it. I just hope that the US will abide by the provisions of the New START treaty, which are legally binding. It is fine to upgrade your stockpile, replacing old weapons with new ones, but there are certain restrictions on how many weapons you can have, and all these restrictions are still in place.

Das ganze Interview hier.

(Der letzte hier zitierte Absatz bezieht sich auf Meldungen über die Modernisierung des US-Atomwaffenarsenals vor einer Woche: U.S. Ramping Up Major Renewal in Nuclear Arms)

(Foto: Lawrow und Bundeaußenminister Frank-Walter Steinmeier am 26. September bei einem Vier-Augen-Gespräch am Rande der UN-Vollversammlung in New York – ©Thomas Köhler/photothek.net)