Lavrov Says Growing US-China Estrangement Not In Moscow's, Brussels' Interests

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th July, 2020) Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday that no country was benefiting from the escalating tensions between the United States and China, be it Russia or the European Union.

"I believe that [tensions between the US and China] are in no way in our interests or interests of the European Union or other countries," Lavrov said at an online session of the Primakov Readings international summit on trends in global politics and economics.

The top Russian diplomat went on to say that the trade turnover between the EU and China, for example, was nearly the same as that between the US and China.

"I do not see any benefits for Russia from the trade war between Washington and Beijing at all. We will neither benefit in relations with the European Union or with India, which are traditionally friendly, and I do not foresee any changes in these [relations]," Lavrov noted.

The relationship between the US and China began to spiral into what has been labeled a trade war when US President Donald Trump ordered 25 percent tariffs to be placed on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods in June of 2018 in a bid to fix the US-Chinese trade deficit. Since then, the two have exchanged multiple rounds of duties.

When the coronavirus pandemic began, with the first outbreak recorded in China's Wuhan city last December, Trump claimed that the virus was created in a local laboratory by the Chinese government and then released into the world, either accidentally or deliberately. Beijing has consistently denied the allegation.

Recently, the confrontation spiraled further as China adopted a controversial national security law to expand its power in Hong Kong last week, to which the US responded by withdrawing Hong Kong's preferential trading partner status and suspending defense equipment to the autonomous region.