US backs coup attempts whenever it can benefit

Russian FM

TEHRAN, (MNA) – Russian Foreign Minister said the United States adopts double standards on regime change in other countries, adding Washington supports them when they serve its interests and rejects them if they target “puppet” governments.

Speaking in an interview with RT on Monday, Lavrov said the US response to the numerous attempts at regime change that occurred around the world in recent years was different and depended on “who was in power and who was trying to carry out the coup.”

“Where the West is happy with the current government, in such situations no protest can be legitimate. But where the government doesn’t reflect the interests of the hegemon and is pursuing the national interests, in those cases we see various unlawful forces are being stimulated [to attack the authorities],” he added.

Lavrov cited the US's different approaches to the regime change in Ukraine in 2014 and the conflict that erupted in Yemen a year later as an example.

According to the minister, the so-called Maidan coup in Kiev was a “revolt that happened against the legitimate president” and which was marred by “bloody provocations against the unarmed police.”

He said that Ukraine’s democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovich had been forced to flee violence despite an EU-sponsored agreement that was reached just hours earlier between his government and the opposition on settling the crisis.

However, he added, “There were no protests against that insurgency from the US or its European allies. So, they just recognized it as a zig-zag in the democratic process.”

“All those years, all our attempts to bring the Ukrainian situation to a political settlement were met with the response [from the Americans and Europeans] that Yanukovich left the country,” Lavrov said.

On the other hand, Lavrov said, when Yemen’s Western-backed president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi resigned and “ran to Saudi Arabia” in 2015 amid a political conflict with the Ansarullah resistance movement, “we’ve heard the West saying that he’s still a legitimate president and that he needs to be installed back in Yemen. And only after that the settlement process will start”.

Russia’s top diplomat also pointed out that the Americans and their allies rejected protests against the “puppet” government of Maria Sandu in Moldova, but fully backed the demonstrations by the supporters of former President Mikhail Saakashvili in Georgia, where the West “doesn’t like the current government.”

His remarks come in the wake of an armed mutiny by a private Russian military company, Press TV reported.

The fleeting mutiny by the Wagner Group against the Russian military leadership on Saturday ended with a deal brokered by Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, Russian officials, and Wagner Group’s boss Yevgeny Prigozhin.

The mutiny started over differences between Prigozhin and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

Prigozhin had accused Russia’s military top brass of ordering a rocket attack on the group’s field camps in Ukraine -- where Russia has been conducting a military operation -- killing “huge numbers” of his paramilitary forces. Authorities in Moscow, however, strongly denied his claim.

Kremlin later announced that it had dropped charges against Prigozhin and that the group’s fighters, who had taken part in the mutiny, would not be prosecuted in recognition of their previous service to Russia.