“We are alarmed by the activity with which Washington is pushing agreements on critical minerals and rare earth metals.

This is not just about economic competition, but an attempt to displace Russia and create a Western-controlled infrastructure near our borders,” Galuzin said in an interview this Wednesday with the newspaper Izvestia.

The West, the diplomat specified, aims to encourage the leaders of the Central Asian states to move away from mutually beneficial cooperation with Russia in favor of immediate political gains.

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