Lavrov said about the "unreliability of American colleagues"

The refusal of the American administration to abandon its own principles of globalization suggests the unreliability of Washington, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a press conference.

"Of course, when the United States begins to act exclusively ignoring all the norms that the Americans themselves promoted, promoting the model that they called globalization, and when they themselves then abandoned all their principles, of course, this suggests that our American colleagues look unreliable when they act like this In this way," the minister said, commenting on the statements of US President Donald Trump on the introduction of 25 percent duties on all countries cooperating with Iran at the request of TASS.

As the minister stressed, "when such a powerful country as the United States acts with such unscrupulous methods, methods of unscrupulous competition, it only means that the competitive position of the United States is consistently deteriorating."

Lavrov noted that there are "fairer methods of defending their positions than such a direct discriminatory use of sanctions levers."

"This can't go on for long. This will lead to an even more serious crisis in international economic and international political relations," the Russian Foreign Minister added.

"We are talking about this in the dialogue that we have with Washington and which we want to continue, we are frankly talking about it, frankly discussing the need to restore some elementary order to all the methods that are used in the international arena," he said, quoted by TASS.

EADaily adds: earlier today, Bloomberg, citing sources, reported that US presidential special envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to Moscow again at the end of January for talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin together with Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

During his visit to the Kremlin, the seventh in the last year, Witkoff intends to present Putin with a new version of the peace plan for Ukraine, which, according to the White House, is 90% ready.

On January 12, Trump announced the introduction of additional duties against Iran's trading partners. "From today, any country doing business with the Islamic Republic of Iran will pay a duty of 25% on all business transactions carried out with the United States," the head of the White House wrote on his Truth Social network. According to Bloomberg, Iran's main trading partners include India, Turkey and China. At the same time, the United States has already imposed increased duties on Indian and Chinese goods, including due to purchases of Russian oil.