Attempts to isolate Russia doomed, says senior MP

(Interfax – Moscow, March 2, 2014) In connection with the situation around Ukraine the West cannot succeed in having Russia internationally isolated, the chairman of the Russian State Duma’s Committee on International Affairs, Aleksey Pushkov, has said.

“As I see it, talk about Russia’s international isolation does not seem productive to me,” Pushkov told Interfax on Sunday [2 March].

The 28 countries that comprise the North Atlantic alliance [NATO] are far from being the whole world community, he said.

“Besides, we have not heard any statements regarding the decisions taken in Russia yesterday [1 March] from the overwhelming majority of world countries, and from a number of major, leading countries like China and India, for example, at that,” Pushkov said.

This is why “western countries will not succeed in setting up some kind of cordon around Russia”, he said. The logic of isolation did not work in the past when calls for such isolation were heard after the situation around Abkhazia and South Ossetia, he added.

“It [the logic] would not work now either, in particular because Russia’s arguments are quite convincing and because it is not Russia’s actions that are the crux of the problem, while the majority of people who live in a number of Ukrainian regions, in Crimea, first and foremost, do not recognize the decisions taken by the incumbent Kiev authorities. In other words, internal division in Ukraine is at the heart of the problem and the West should be aware of this,” Pushkov said. [Passage omitted to end]