“Coronavirus pandemic affected international politics and the socioeconomic environment in all their aspects without exception, freezing political contacts and interrupting established value and supply chains. COVID-19 plunged the global economy into a deep crisis, and the recovery will take a long time. Not only is the world living through a major economic downturn, but it could also be on the verge of restructuring established economic links,” Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister, said in an interview to Argumenty i Fakty newspaper, website of the Foreign Ministry reports.
“The pandemic levelled the playing field for all actors, showing yet again that in today’s interconnected world most threats transcend borders, making it impossible to wait out the whole thing without becoming involved. It seems that all these developments should compel the international community to set momentary differences aside, at least for some time, and combine efforts in order to come up with a common response to this new global challenge. However, a positive breakthrough failed to materialize. International affairs are becoming increasingly prone to confrontation, with growing distrust among international actors. Instead of uniting our capabilities in the fight against the coronavirus, we are witnessing attempts to assign blame for the spread of the infection.”
As Sergey Lavrov noted, speaking about COVID outbreak, “Different national healthcare systems coped differently with the coronavirus pandemic under one and the same set of WHO recommendations and agreed-upon international medical and sanitary regulations. Specialists will analyse cooperation between member countries in the fight against the pandemic, with the WHO’s coordinating role. Naturally, based on the results of this assessment, they will have to decide how to make international cooperation in global healthcare more effective, including in preventing medical emergencies and responding to them.”
According to the minister, Russian authorities never stopped “efforts to bring home those Russians who found themselves stranded and in a predicament abroad due to the coronavirus, which were often complicated by the strict protective measures adopted by the host countries. Nevertheless, we have worked out a correct and successful algorithm to coordinate the process between Russian agencies and organizations and provide assistance to our fellow citizens. The total number of people evacuated since mid-March is more than 275K; since the beginning of April, the number has exceeded 67K, yet 23K of our compatriots still remain abroad.”