The United States pursues double standards because it backs Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who has fled the country, but refused to support former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.

The United States pursues double standards because it backs Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who has fled the country, but refused to support former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.

"I have no choice but to use this hackneyed cliche: obvious double standards have been applied. Certainly, we did not want the events that are happening today in Ukraine and Yemen," Lavrov told a press conference during his visit to Guatemala.

"In both cases, the sides will have to move toward national reconciliation," he added.

The Ukrainian crisis would not have occurred if on February 22, 2014 Europe and other countries that witnessed the signing of an agreement between the Ukrainian opposition and Yanukovych had exerted their influence and had demanded the immediate restoration of all agreements that were trampled upon by the opposition, Lavrov said.

"But in the case of Yemen, the U.S. adopted a totally opposite approach," the Russian minister said.

Earler of Thursday Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich has warned the United States and other countries supporting a military operation in Yemen being conducted by a coalition led by Saudi Arabia of its serious implications for regional security.

"The fact that someone supports the coalition's activities - well, these are probably their own priorities. But in essence this is a very serious threat to regional security while the conflict in Syria hasn't been settled and conflict areas exist actually throughout the entire region of the Middle East and North Africa," Lukashevich said at a news briefing in Moscow in commenting on support declared by the U.S. for the operation Saudi Arabia and a number of other Arab countries have started in Yemen.

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