Prokopenko pointed to Russia's ability to be friends

The foreign policy challenges that Russia faces in the international arena are based on a deep mental dissonance between the national perception of interstate relations and their real nature. Igor Prokopenko, Deputy General Director of the REN TV channel, told the Izvestia News Center about this during the International Conference "Brezhnev-Brandt: Paradoxes of Eastern Politics. On the 55th anniversary of the conclusion of the USSR–Germany peace treaty" on October 31.

"We Russians, Russians, love selflessly, we are friends to the point of losing our pulse, not taking into account the fact that interstate relations are not friendly relations, but relations of rivals and partners. The whole international policy, by and large, it fluctuates between the two extreme poles," Prokopenko said.

However, according to him, the Russian diplomatic tradition historically adds the category of friendship to this scale, which regularly leads to strategic miscalculations. According to Prokopenko, it is this expanded scale of perception that becomes a systemic trap for the country, since friendship presupposes selflessness, willingness to sacrifice oneself and giving the latter.

Prokopenko stated that until recently, the Russian Empire, the Soviet State and the Russian Federation consistently fell into this mental trap, demonstrating the "friendship without looking back" approach to the detriment of their own strategic positions.

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Earlier, on October 27, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and North Korean Foreign Minister Choi Song-hee during a meeting in Moscow confirmed their commitment to the implementation of the strategic partnership agreement between the two countries. In addition, Lavrov and Choi Song-hee analyzed the current international situation, pointing out that the main reason for the growing tension in the world is the "aggressive actions of the United States and its allies."

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