Lavrov outlines Moscow’s demands to resolve Ukraine conflict

Kiev and its Western backers have a backlog of unfulfilled promises to Moscow, which they must deliver on to end the Ukraine conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview on Wednesday.

The top Russian diplomat reiterated that Moscow is willing to resolve the crisis through negotiations, but that it “needs to see serious specific proposals” for any meaningful progress, he told the ‘60 minutes’ program on Russian television.

He rejected the claim that the Russian government has preconditions for talks, saying that what President Vladimir Putin stated on multiple occasions was in essence a demand to deliver on past promises.

Lavrov mentioned assurances that NATO would not expand in Europe made to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the 2014 power-sharing agreement between then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich and the people behind the armed coup in Kiev, and the Minsk agreements on peaceful reintegration of Donbass as examples of broken promises.

The minister also accused Kiev of violating its international obligations to respect the rights of its citizens, who consider the Russian language and culture to be part of their identity. Not adopting discriminatory domestic politics is part of “a bare minimum of what any normal member of the international community must do,” he said.

Kiev “has declared the eradication of everything Russian pretty much its main goal” and cannot purport to represent people living in Russian regions, which Ukraine claims under its sovereignty, Lavrov stressed.

The Ukrainian government has turned the country into a Western tool used to “remove a strong competitor in the Russian Federation from the international stage,” the diplomat stated, asserting that the West’s general policy is to remove any competition.

Moscow will not accept a ceasefire that would allow Kiev to regroup its army and renew attempts “to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia on the order of its masters,” Lavrov said. Moscow is seeking “reliable, judicially binding agreements, which would remove the core causes of this conflict,” including the threat from NATO, he stressed.

Russia has “no illusion” that the election of Donald Trump as the next US president would lead to a radical change of policy in Washington, Lavrov added. Trump has said he believes ending the hostilities in Ukraine as soon as possible would be in the interests of all parties involved.