Western countries are not discussing restoring peace with Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Newsweek in an interview, APA reports citing TASS.
"At present, as far as we can see, restoring peace is not part of our adversary's plan. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has not revoked his decree banning negotiations with Moscow," Lavrov said. "Washington and its NATO allies provide political, military and financial support to Kyiv so that the [conflict] would go on," Russia’s top diplomat added.
"What I want to say is that we have been trying to extinguish this crisis for more than a decade, yet each time we put to paper agreements that suit everyone, Kyiv and its masters would backpedal," Lavrov continued. "This exactly happened to the agreement reached in February 2014: it was trampled on by the opposition that committed a coup with the US support. A year later, the Minsk Agreements endorsed by the UN Security Council were concluded; these were also sabotaged during seven years, and the leaders of Ukraine, Germany and France, who had signed the document, bragged afterwards that they had never intended to fulfil it. The document initialed in Istanbul in late March 2022 was never signed by Zelensky at the insistence of his Western supervisors, in particular, the then British prime minister," he concluded.