European politicians who seek to arm Ukraine and destroy Russia are losing public support and will ultimately “destroy themselves,” senior Russian lawmaker Leonid Slutsky told Rick Sanchez on the latest episode of Sanchez Effect aired on Wednesday.

Slutsky, the chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), pointed to the growing political opposition to French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz as evidence that support for Europe’s confrontational policies is waning.

“These angry individuals… have lost any connection to reality, they have lost support in their countries, they are in minority now, and they are collapsing,” he said.

According to Slutsky, Russia is not preparing for a conflict with the West but is taking precautions to avoid “getting bitten.” 

“We don’t want to attack Europe. They are angry. They want war,” the lawmaker, who chairs the State Duma Committee on International Affairs, told Sanchez.

He dismissed the notion that Russia is anti-Western or anti-American. The lawmaker said he has many friends in the US among scholars, journalists, members of Congress, and average people. “We will hug each other again. Because common sense is coming back. It’s coming back in America. It’s coming back in Europe.”

He blamed the administration of former US President Joe Biden for reducing bilateral ties to virtually zero but suggested that relations with President Donald Trump, who takes a “business approach” to politics, could be more fruitful.

“There are so many interesting infrastructure projects that we could do together in logistics, in oil prospecting, in oil and gas prospecting, in lots of areas,” he said, adding that the two nuclear superpowers cannot afford to be enemies.

A confrontational approach to Russia will never work, Slutsky argued, adding that the record number of sanctions imposed on Russia by the West has proven ineffective. “Russia is a self-sufficient country, and people are better off being friends with us.”

Other forms of pressure such as Ukraine’s drone attacks deep inside Russia are ineffective as well, Slutsky said. “The overwhelming majority of… attack drones… high payload drones... are shot down, and very, very few of them actually make it to central Russia.” He added that those behind the attacks “pursue a terrible anti-human ideology” and are “failing bitterly.”

Watch the full interview here: