The West’s Russia policy is built upon the infamous “highly likely thing,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Larry King’s ‘Politicking’ show, saying this was epitomised by the alleged Russian ‘meddling’ and the Skripal affair.

Lavrov told the veteran TV host he believes loose assumptions and unfounded claims are now at the core of the Western approach towards dealing with Moscow.

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“Highly likely thing and the assertion that there is no other credible explanation, is becoming a rule on which Western friends try to base their policy on Russia,” the top diplomat said, citing allegations around Moscow’s influence on the 2016 US presidential election, as well as the ongoing Skripal poisoning row.

While the US Senate’s investigation failed to establish any proof that Russia has ever interfered in the presidential election, the inquiry into the Salisbury incident “is also going on without any transparent information,” Lavrov noted.

Meanwhile, many in the West are reluctant to engage in fair competition with Russia, Lavrov maintains. Citing Donald Trump’s assertion that President Vladimir Putin could become a friend of his “some day,” Lavrov said: “[Trump] said [Putin] is a competitor, a strong competitor. But speaking of competition, I always believed in free competition because the free market is about fair competition.”

On the US president’s recent claim that Moscow is wielding power over Berlin through the natural gas trade, Lavrov said: “Russian authoritarian gas is supposed to be worse than democratic American gas, then I’m awfully sorry but this is not economy, this is not competition, this is pure ideology.”

On the other side of the Atlantic, France is trying to label RT “as agent of influence,” the minister noted, saying Moscow is worried about the French crackdown on some foreign media: “If it’s not censorship, [then] I don’t understand much in this life.”

King, whose talk show Politicking is aired by RT America, added that “Concerning this program, which is on RT, and other sources, RT has never interfered with this show at all, never edited us, never censored us or anything, so I go on record saying that.”

The full interview with Lavrov will be aired at 21:00 GMT on RT America and at 21:30 GMT on RT International.