The United States is aiming to weaken the EU on the military and economic levels, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview published on Sunday. 

Europeans are already suffering from the sanctions imposed on Russia “many times more than the US,” he said.

Lavrov noted that several economists, in Russia and the West, have concluded that "the US goal is to completely ‘bleed’ and deindustrialize the European economy." Washington's interests include weakening Europe militarily as well, he added.

To explain, Lavrov said that Washington has an interest to "constantly keep [the EU] under pressure, to force it to pump weapons into Ukraine, and in return, fill the EU countries’ arms depots with American supplies."

To achieve this goal, he said the United States has been guided by “economic, purely selfish calculations, as well as by ideological complexes of superiority."

Earlier this month, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the US was making “crazy money” by selling gas to European countries at exorbitant prices against a backdrop of EU sanctions on Russian energy supplies.

He said this would inevitably lead to the “deindustrialization” of the EU which, in turn, will  have “very, very deplorable consequences” for the bloc “over the next 10 to 20 years.”

It is worth noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin also underlined earlier that "the goal of the United States is the deindustrialization of Europe, and European elites understand this. This is not even servility, but a direct betrayal of their peoples."

Gas prices have surged following the sanctions imposed by the EU on Russia over its military operation in Ukraine. Consequently, the bloc has been struggling with expected energy shortages in winter and soaring inflation. Brussels has largely followed the US' stance of seeking to weaken Russia by imposing sanctions, while supporting Ukraine through weapons supplies and financial aid.

Read: Washington, not Kiev, has final say in resolving Ukraine issue: Peskov