US plotting to interfere in Russian elections – Lavrov
Washington has openly embraced the goal of destabilizing Moscow, with an eye on the 2024 presidential election, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday.
The US is not stopping its “vicious practice of interference in the internal affairs of sovereign countries,” Lavrov told the meeting of the ruling United Russia party.
“The forms of such interference are very diverse, including threats, blackmail and the organization of ‘color revolutions’. The bloody coup d'état in Ukraine that succeeded in 2014 was attempted again six years later in Belarus, unsuccessfully,” the foreign minister explained. “This obviously won’t be the last step. They openly set the goal of undermining domestic political stability in our country – in the context of the 2024 presidential elections.”
While the situation in the world is “not easy,” there is a clear strengthening of multipolarity, Lavrov added. New centers of growth and global decision-making are emerging in Eurasia, the Pacific, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, based on the “natural, inalienable right of peoples to determine their own destiny.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the 2024 presidential election will be held “in strict accordance with the law,” and in compliance with all democratic and constitutional procedures. He is eligible to run for re-election, but has not yet announced if he intends to do so.
In March 2022, US President Joe Biden publicly declared that Putin “cannot remain in power,” though officials in Washington later said he was expressing a personal sentiment and not an actual policy change.
Several months later, former national security adviser John Bolton openly advocated for “regime change” in Russia, urging the US to encourage “Russians themselves to exacerbate divisions among those with real authority,” in order to bring about a revolution.
