Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a press conference, on 22 March 2022, that the West’s unprecedented sanctions against anything Russian have nothing to do with events in Ukraine, but with the rise of a multipolar world.

He first invited each journalist in the room to appraise the illegality of the current sanctions in the framework of international law.

However, his overriding point was that the sanctions are not aimed at hurting the Russian government, but at sweeping away Russian culture as a whole.

It all started with the ban on Russian athletes from competing in the Paralympics, even though the spirit of the Games is to separate sports from politics. Then, the sports federations excluded the Russian teams. The momentum continued against Russian companies and Russian citizens abroad. It now extends to Russian artists, conductors, dancers, singers, etc. Even authors like Dostoyevsky or Solzhenitsyn have been removed from university curricula.

None of this has anything to do with the “aggression” against Ukraine. The West is showing its true face, he continued. It is pulling out all the stops to block the construction of a multipolar world and to preserve Western domination over others.