On September 27, 2019, in his speech at the 74th session of the UN General Assembly in New York, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the West of not wanting to accept the “weakening” of its centuries-long dominance of world affairs. The leading Western countries, he said, are trying to impede the development of a “polycentric world,” to regain their privileged positions, and to impose standards of conduct based “on the narrow Western interpretation of liberalism.”