Russia’s ambassador to Australia Aleksey Pavlovsky has blamed Australia for deteriorated ties between Russia and Australia.
“The relationship between Russia and Australia has reached the lowest point in decades because of the Australian government’s support for Ukraine”, he told ABC Radio on Thursday.
He said that the federal government had sided with its allies over Ukraine instead of considering the best interests of the country.
His comments came at a time when Foreign Minister Senator Wong is attending a G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Bali on July 7-8 alongside her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. There is no confirmation that Senator Wong will interact Russian Foreign Minister or not.
Ambassador Aleksey Pavlovsky said that Australian government’s decision to impose sanctions on Russia and Russian nationals and provide lethal and non-lethal military aid to Ukraine was very sad.
“I wish I could say something positive about Russian-Australian relations but they have reached probably the lowest point in decades”, he added.
“Whatever cooperation we had has been destroyed by the Australian side without really giving much thought to what Australia’s interests were”, he claimed adding “(It is) just for the sake of moving in lockstep with its allies and this is really sad”.
Australia is the largest non-NATO contributor to Ukraine’s battle to oust the invading Russian army and has provided a total of $390 million in military and humanitarian assistance. It has also sanctioned 843 individuals and 62 Russian entities.
On banning 120 Australian businesspeople and journalists by Russia, Ambassador Aleksey said it’s a response of Australian government who banned 843 Russian nationals.
On a question he said that this war could have been avoided if the ways of diplomatic dialogue didn’t block by the West.
He said that there are existential reasons behind Russian military action in Ukraine and it can be stopped when these reasons are removed.
Ambassador Aleksey told ABC Radio that situation on the ground in Ukraine is very different from what being shown on ABC and other Australian Media.
He blamed Australian media for biased coverage of Ukraine war and insisted that ABC and other Australian media were not showing reality.
“France 24 in his recent report has shown that how people in Donbass has welcomed Russian forces but ABC never shown that. Many western journalists are talking, articles appear in New York Times about the fakes of Ukranian propaganda which never covered by ABC”, he lamented.
