MOSCOW, February 9. /TASS/. Russia and its diplomacy are a vanguard force in the formation of a multi-polar system of international relations based on equality of all states, speaker of Russia’s Federation Council upper parliament house Valentina Matviyenko said on Tuesday.

"The West is seeking to picture Russia as a major threat to the entire humankind," she wrote in her blog on the upper house’s official website on the occasion of the Diplomats’ Day makred in Russia on February 10. "As a matter of fact, things are the other way round. The source of tension in the present-day world is not Russia but the West. Tension is a consequence of the conflict between the growing demand for a poly-centric world order as the only system capable of ensuring real equality of all states and attempts of the United States and its allies to retain and enhance their dominance at any cost."

Despite the fact that "certain circles in the West" are still incapable of dropping stereotypes and patterns of the Cold War era, a new system of international relations is inevitable, Matviyenko noted. "The International community, so to say, is doomed for a reset as it is an objective call of the global development," she underscored, adding that "Russia, the Russian diplomacy is a vanguard force of this process."

She stressed that the strength of the Russian diplomacy was its relying on negotiations and observance of the norms of international law in following the course towards strengthening the country’s positions in the world. "Pursuing this course, persistently, even assertively, we, as a rule, lay a focus on the negotiating process, on efforts towards a balance of interests, on observing norms of international law and the United Nations Charter," she said, adding that these principles formed the basis of Russia’s policy towards Ukraine. That’s why Russia "calls on Kiev to fully implement the Minsk agreements and to settle the conflict with the self-proclaimed republics in Donbass by peaceful means."

"This is what we are being guided by in our efforts against international terrorism in Syria," Matrviyenko stressed.