VILNIUS. Feb 6 (Interfax/BNS) - Head of the EU Delegation to Russia Vygaudas Usackas has warned against confrontation with Moscow and said the search for ways to develop relations is underway.
"This is a very serious standoff which may enhance and deepen military confrontation," the diplomat said in an interview published by the Lithuanian journal Veidas on Friday.
The interview was published against the background of a new peace plan for eastern Ukraine, where government forces are fighting the militia, presented by the leaders of Germany and France. The plan will be discussed in Moscow on Friday.
A short time ago, the West was expecting Russia to accept Western values, Usackas said.
He said conversations with renowned Russian politicians and observers made him realize that it was a period of hypocrisy: the formal political doctrine of Western Europe and the United States envisaged Russia's shift to Western liberal and democratic values, as well as to free market values, respect for human rights and freedoms and a competitive and open political system providing equal opportunities for opposition forces, free media and free market competition but that was a conception of the West rather than a wish and belief of Russians.
For some time, the EU and the U.S. saw Russia the way they wanted it to be rather than the way it really was, Usackas continued. He said they were shocked but now the primary objective is to resolve the real crisis [in Ukraine] so that this crisis, this conflict and this war do not spread. Solutions need to be found for mitigating the crisis and achieving stabilization, the diplomat said.
The search for ways to develop relations with Russia is underway, because it is still a neighbor of the EU and the sides are related by the energy sector and trade, he said.
The European Union is the largest trade partner of Russia, which will be downgraded from the third to the fourth position as the trade partner of the EU, after the United States, China and Switzerland, in 2015, he said. Besides, the 142-million people market located nearby will always be a magnet for Europeans, and the role of Russia as a transit state on the Silk Roads route between China and the EU will be growing, he said.
Usackas said they should not forget that Russia is a member of the UN Security Council enjoying a veto right in global affairs. So, the EU and the United States are maintaining certain contacts with Russia despite the crisis whenever such contacts are required by treaties or cannot be avoided, he said. As to whether or not the EU had been naive in its attempts to transform Russia, Usackas said they were leaving behind the period of hypocrisy that was a shock to many from Lisbon to Helsinki and EU-Russia relations would not be the same.