MOSCOW. April 9 (Interfax) - It is not up to Russia to find a way out of the impasse and to normalize relations with the European Union, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
"Normalization does not depend on us. And it is not up to us to lead the Moscow-Brussels relations out of a rather serious impasse which was created by the unilateral policy of sanctions. But we aware that, I would say, most countries of the European Union are not happy with the current situation," Lavrov said at a press conference in Moscow on Thursday.
"Alas, they [the EU] have an aggressive minority which is trying to speculate on the so-called solidarity principle," the Russian minister remarked.
In the words of Lavrov, the EU initiated the freeze on dialogue. "We did not freeze relations with Brussels. To be more precise, Brussels severed all contacts, which had been structured over years and helped maintain the regular trust-based dialogue, highlight emerging problems and solve them rapidly. Brussels decided to stop holding summits," the minister said.
"For years, long before the Ukraine situation, Brussels has been refusing to convene the Permanent Partnership Council tasked to review the entire range of Russia-EU relations. In addition, Brussels has frozen all sectoral dialogue," the minister pointed out.