Writing in 2016 in the leading Russian foreign affairs journal Russia in Global Affairs, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov argued that the West had always been a source of existential threat to Russia in a way that the East had never been. Western Europe, Lavrov wrote, had always tried to impose its will and way of life on Russia and deny the Russian people their identity. By comparison, the Mongols—the Golden Horde—were on the whole tolerant and did not deny Russia the right to have its own faith and determine its own fate.
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Eugene Rumer: Russia and the West in a new standoff
People are reflected in the window of a gifts shop as they walk along the Red Square in central Moscow, with the Kremlin's Spasskaya Tower in the background, on April 1.
