Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks and answers to questions at the Mediterranean Dialogues Conference, Rome, December 2, 2016

I don't think I will give you a speech. I think it is more productive to have an interactive conversation. I am sure that people who gathered from the second conference… And I thank the minister of foreign affairs and the institute which is cooperating with the ministry. We believe that this is a very promising format and would be doing our best to the extent of our abilities to help make it a permanent place for discussing a very important issue, issue of the future of the Mediterranean and the regions which surround it. And certainly this is a crossroad of the world economic, logistical, transport communications. And this region is in a very bad shape. It is in a very bad shape. I am sure that people who gathered here are interested in learning about foreign policies in various places, including Russia. I am sure you know the basic principles of our assessment of what is going on in the Mediterranean, what are the reasons for this. And we think that the so called Arab Spring was moved in a very different and very dangerous direction under the banner of democratization. Democratization understood not by the people of the region, but the people of the region being given some recipe of how to proceed. And it turned out into an effort of outside forces to change regimes.

Luckily Tunisia has been spared the worst. Egypt was less lucky, and of course Libya was ruined, and we are all now fighting to save the statehood of Libya. And hopefully we can succeed. We discussed it yesterday with the president of the republic, today with Paolo Gentiloni. And just now we met with John Kerry who will be succeeding me on this rostrum. And we also discussed among other things the situation in Libya. And in Syria of course. We believe that after what happened in Libya the international community cannot be negligible vis-à-vis terrorists. Let's not forget that those who toppled Gaddafi they are now creating problems to about a dozen countries in Africa. I remember I talked with Laurent Fabius when extremists were going into Mali and the French wanted to get some Security Council permission for their contingent, military contingent to be authorized to fight extremists who were coming from Libya. I said - of course, this is something which we always support, giving mandates to those who counter terrorist threat. But please, I told him, please don't forget that those are the people whom you armed, whom you supported, hoping that they will help you to achieve the geopolitical goal of toppling Gaddafi. He said - c'est la vie. Well, c'est la vie is not a policy, it's I believe just proof that you need to be consistent and you cannot do something which would reverberate against you like a boomerang. So the regime changes at any cost, including the cost of cooperating with the terrorists, I hope, we should all have learned our lessons by now. Geopolitical games like between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan in the 1980s when the US was supporting the mujahedeen only because they were fighting against the Soviet troops. And then the mujahedeen gave birth Al-Qaeda. And then Al-Qaeda in 2001, 9/11, attacked the United States. ISIL... The most efficient part of ISIL are the officers from Saddam Hussein's army. The army which was dismantled by the decree of Paul Bremer in 2003, dismantled like all other Sunni-dominated structures. The army, the security, the police - they were deprived of their job, of their earnings. And they without any ideological liking of disliking joined ISIL which later offered them employment basically.

And of course Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was released from the American prison in Baghdad some time in 2006. Now he is leading this creature. And we would do our best, and I hope we would be getting support and real counter-terrorist front would be created as President Putin proposed. Because we don't want after these lessons of helping Al-Qaeda to get up and running, helping ISIL to get up and running. We would not allow the Syrian situation to give support for the Al-Nusra Front.

Well, I think I stop here. I don't want to draw any conclusions, I just want to provoke some thoughts and some questions, some comments. And thank you.

Question: Thank you! And by the way I just pick up from Syria because that's a key issue right now. And it's obvious. You've been in a way the strongest ally of Bashar al-Assad. But sometimes friends must be tough with friends. And maybe now you could tell your friend that it's time to compromise. I am not saying - surrender. I am saying - compromise. Do you think the time has come for him to compromise?

Sergey Lavrov: This is long overdue. I just met briefly with Staffan de Mistura and once again encouraged him not to continue dragging on the negotiations and not to wait for those who don't want to implement the Security Council resolutions. The resolutions which say - Syrian inclusive non-sectarian governance to be created by mutual consent of the government and the opposition. A new constitution would be worked out by this governance and then 6 months after the new constitution has been adopted election will take place.

And people who say that before they start discussing the implementation of this roadmap, they need to see Assad out, they violate the Security Council resolution. So, instead of just waiting for them to become cooperative, the invitations must be issued to all Syrian groups, and those who come, they should start discussions with the government. The government is ready for this - the government has long been ready. And since May, Staffan De Mistura cannot reconvene his process. And the most important thing is that, until they sit down at the same table, we will never know whether they are able to agree or not. So those who say, "Well, we must convey the meeting only when we prearrange the outcome," this is the wrong approach, and this is something which we cannot accept, because it is up to the Syrian people to decide the future of their country, and this is the language of the Security Council resolution.

So in this game - I don't want to sound cynical, but there are many games around the Syrian tragedy, there are many "friends," or groups of "friends." The Group of Friends of Syria was created by the anti-Assad coalition, by countries who decided to support the opposition, and not to be helpful for the dialogue. Then we managed, I believe, to achieve a very important result with our American colleagues, with John Kerry: the International Syria Support Group was created, with broad membership, including those who are perceived as supporters of the regime, and those who are perceived as supporters of the opposition, and those who promote approaches aimed at reaching a compromise between the two - Italy, of course, is one of the members of this group. And we thought that this would be now the place to promote exactly what you talk about: the dialogue about a political compromise on the future of Syria. Instead, the Group of Friends of Syria, which is basically anti-Assad, continues to function, and this is not very logical from my point of view.

So the Syrian government has what you called "friends" - in our case it's not friendship, it's not some personal relationship, we are not wedded to anyone in Syria; we want the Syrian state not to go the way of Libya, so that after it is failed, we would be spending years and years, and millions and billions, to help them regain statehood again. Syria is a crucial country for this region, for many reasons - I don't want to go into details in this audience. And the opposition groups, they also have their friends outside Syria, different friends. Some are supported by Europeans, some are supported by the countries in the region. So if we all want them to compromise and to reach a mutually acceptable decision, then all these "groups of friends" must send the same signal to their people inside Syria. And none of them should tell their people in Syria not to implement the resolution and not to sit down at the negotiating table as long as Assad is in power. That's my view.

Question: But you're not going to ask a specific protection for East Aleppo? I mean, the feeling here is that, knowing that you are on their side, they go even deeper sometimes.

Sergey Lavrov:  We are not on the side of anyone, we are on the side of the Syrian state. We responded to a request from a legitimate government, the government of a country who is a member of the United Nations. At the time, about August last year, when it was one or two months until Damascus would have fallen to ISIL and the like. And we responded to the request to help fight terrorists. By the way, at the time, when Damascus was about to fall, no one was making any emotional calls in favor of negotiations. Most of the people were just waiting for the regime to fall, and then to - by the way, I don't think they knew what they would be doing next, because the regime was about to fall to the terrorists. And again, the same approach was applied as in the Libyan case, when anything was good to topple Qaddafi, and then we will see what we can do to reign the terrorists in. It didn't work, and it would never work, in any place including Syria.

What is happening in East Aleppo is the result of the failure by the friends of some of the Syrian parties to separate their friends in Syria from Jabhat al-Nusra - the plea, the obligation which the US undertook as early as January this year, telling us that in a couple of weeks, this separation would be achieved, and this was the turning point for anything that must follow, including a cessation of hostilities throughout the country, including the involvement of armed opposition groups in the negotiating process, and including, of course, the resolution of humanitarian issues. And then the entire period of Russian-American co-chairmanship in the International Syria Support Group, our bilateral negotiations, which ended in September, when the presidents of the US and Russia met in China on September 6th, and they resolved the final remaining issue of the joint effort on Syria. And three days later, on September 9th, John Kerry and myself met and finalized the language. For some reasons, the Americans decided not to publish that document. We were in favor of making it public together with all its annexes. They did not. Then it was leaked, and you can read this document. Basically, the deal was that they separate, a cessation of hostilities would be announced, the Syrian Air Force would not be flying at all, and Russian and Coalition air forces would only hit targets that would be mutually agreed. And to lose this deal, I believe, was a huge mistake. It would have been resolved long ago.

What is happening now, our American colleagues and some regional countries, they try to persuade us to accept something that we already went through many times: a unilateral cessation of hostilities by the Syrian army (and in the past, such periods -  two days, three days - were announced, only to see that, together with humanitarian aid, hundreds and hundreds of fighters were coming from abroad into Aleppo. So they want this time iron-proof guarantee, an obligation to stop all hostilities, and then they would discuss for about ten days what can be done to separate the "moderate" opposition from Nusra. I believe we cannot lose sight of priority number one: we cannot allow terrorists to get any legitimacy in Syria.

Having said this, we are still ready to compromise. Staffan De Mistura, whom I just saw, proposed some time ago that Nusra might be asked to leave, with their arms. And at that time, we supported him, in spite of the fact that we consider counterterrorism our number one priority. But we supported him, because we wanted to save lives, which would mean that Nusra would get out, and the fight with Nusra would continue in other places, but this would have worked for the civilian population. This was not accepted by quite a number of countries, and I have reasons to believe that this was done because somebody wants to keep a part of Aleppo under the control of Nusra, which is absolutely unacceptable.

And in the meantime, after the Syrian army, with our support, took over about 40 percent of East Aleppo, the threat to the Castello Road is removed. We informed on the same day the United Nations in New York and Geneva, telling them that humanitarian convoys could be arranged and just information to the Syrian government, and necessary procedures, which are not very difficult, which the United Nations have used many times - and the assistance could move in. The United Nations, for some reason or the other - I don't know - is not yet moving on this issue. And we decided not to wait, so we are sending Russian humanitarian aid to East Aleppo. We have deployed two mobile hospitals, we've sent doctors, medicines, medical equipment, and these hospitals already function to help Syrian civilians in East Aleppo.

So, hopefully, if the international community is hesitating on humanitarian deliveries, on a political process, maybe we can encourage those Syrian groups who are ready for this not to wait until the capricious parties agree to remove their ultimatum, but start doing things in practice, sending aid, and bringing people to the table. Who is not accepting an invitation to the negotiations, must be left out. 

Question: Mr. Minister, we have a new president elected in the US, and his administration will soon be in office. Do you believe that the first agreement with the Trump administration could be sealed on Syria?

Sergey Lavrov: Well, I cannot guess, I can only be guided by facts. And the fact is that during his campaign Donald Trump repeatedly stated that one of his first priorities would be fighting and defeating ISIL and the other terrorists in Syria. And when his foreign policy team is formed, when he is inaugurated, when he would be making formal steps, then we would be, of course, taking this into consideration. But if - if the United States will concentrate on fighting terrorism, and if they want to cooperate with the Russian Federation, we would be certainly very much ready.

By the way, when I talked to my colleagues in the current administration many years ago - not many, I think, three years ago - they said that the precondition of Assad getting out was a mistake (not all of them said this, but some of them), and that for the US interests it is much more important to defeat terrorists in Syria than to remove Assad. Basically, Donald Trump said the same. But this approach was not implemented in practice by the current administration, but I believe it would be important to see how the new administration would address this problem.

Question: And more broadly, Mr. Minister, which are the best opportunities that you see for cooperation with the new US administration?

Sergey Lavrov: As I said, we would be responding positively to anyone who says that he wants to cooperate with Russia to resolve world problems. And a specific attitude could be seen when we see the administration up and functioning.

Question: Mr. Minister, you know, sometimes for the international audience it is kind of complicated to understand where you are going, what are your plans, where do you project yourselves for the future on the global scale. Will you help us to understand it better?

Sergey Lavrov: Sure. If somebody has doubts regarding the questions which you've raised, the best advice would be to read Russian history, and you would understand a lot...

Question: That's a lot!

Sergey Lavrov: We certainly read Italian history, and we know how Italians feel in this world.

Question: Mr. Minister, the situation in Ukraine and Crimea is one of the top issues of disagreement between your country and several European countries, and especially the European countries in the East…

Sergey Lavrov: Did I miss something in geography lessons?

Question: How could these two topics – Crimea and Ukraine – be shifted from a problem to an opportunity for cooperation?

Sergey Lavrov: Well, frankly, Crimea is not a problem. Crimea is Russian Federation territory, which returned to Russia, where it belongs, on the basis of the results of the referendum of the population. And anyone who wants to see for themselves what is going on in Crimea is invited to come. Quite a number of members of your parliament, members of the French parliament visited and without any bias they saw the real situation in Crimea, including the situation of the Crimean Tatars – which I discussed yesterday in Turkey with the Turkish Foreign Minister –, including the decision of president Putin immediately after Crimea came back to Russia to pass a decree on political rehabilitation of Crimean Tatars, which was never done under Ukrainian control. He also passed a decree making Crimean Tatar language one of the three state languages together with the Russian and Ukranian, which was also never done. And we adopted, the Russian government adopted a special program to promote economic, social and general development of Crimea including the Crimean Tatars. And, once again, those who want to see for themselves and not insist on ultimata, they should, indeed, come and see. On Ukraine, I assume that people present here have read the Minsk Agreement of February 12, 2015. This is the only way forward. Unfortunately, our Ukrainian colleagues are not ready, I believe, domestically, to do some things which president Poroshenko committed himself to, like developing a law on special status in Eastern part of Ukraine, the law on local elections, the changes to the constitution to make the special status of this region permanent, and the law on amnesty. And since February 2015, the Normandy Four and the contact group with its subgroups has been busy trying to persuade the Ukrainians that they have to do what they promised. It’s really, you know, beyond my understanding. They still have the… what they call “anti-terrorist operation”. They called them terrorists and separatists. The two leaders of the Donetsk Proclaimed Republic and Luhansk Proclaimed Republic personally signed the Minsk Agreements upon the insistence of president Poroshenko. He wanted these two men to physically sign the paper, and they did. Now they say “OK, they have fulfilled their job, they can go because they are not legitimate and they should not participate in the elections.” And this kind of preconditions are invented on a daily basis. I would you like just to understand one thing: this “anti-terrorist operation” was announced by the government of Ukraine against the parts of the country who did not accept illegal anti-constitutional armed coup d’état. When the crisis in Kiev was aggravating, when these demonstrators in the central square of Kiev were confronting police, the Western colleagues, including Secretary-General of NATO, repeatedly called upon Ukrainian president not to use army against his people. Then, when president Yanukovich signed the deal with the opposition, which was witnessed by ministers of foreign affairs of France, Germany and Poland, and next morning the opposition stated, you know, that there was a coup and the opposition said that they formed the government of the winners. And we asked Germany, France and Poland whether they want, you know, to do something about the disruption of the deal which they witnessed, and they shied away. By the way, president Obama also called president Putin asking him to support the deal between president Yanukovich and the opposition, which we basically did. And then they said “Well, this deal is off because the president of Ukraine has fled.” He did not flee, he went to Kharkov, where his party was convening a congress. And, in any case, the deal was not about him staying in Kiev or getting out of Kiev – the deal was for him to agree to early elections, to agree not to use police or any special services except to protect government buildings. And the first line of the deal was “creation of the government of national unity.” And when next morning they said “He is gone and we created the government of the winners”, this sent a very funny message, you know, to those, who didn’t accept what was done and how it was done. And the first act of the new parliament after the coup was to pass a law depriving the Russian speakers of many rights given to them by the European Convention on Languages. And, as I said, the territories that did not accept the coup, they never launched military action against the new leader. And NATO, by the way… We asked NATO: “You insisted that Yanukovich does not use army against his people. Can you repeat this and send the same message to the coup leaders?” You know what NATO did? They said: “We call upon the new leaders of Ukraine to use force proportionately.” Feel the difference. And then… Well, there are many arguments, I don’t want to waste your time. But one very specific thing which is closer to the Mediterranean than Ukraine: Yemen. Two years ago, president Hadi was toppled and he fled to Saudi Arabia where he now stays. For more than two years, the international community insists that he must come back and must be brought to the presidential functions. So my question is why Ukraine should be treated differently from how Yemen is treated?                   

Question: Just a very short question, because we are approaching the conclusion here. We spoke about the United States and in the very last few months the Clinton campaign accused Russians of hacking them and interfering. This morning, apparently the FSB said that there is a chance that in some time soon some Russian banks could be attacked by hackers. So what’s happening out there? How do you see that?

Sergey Lavrov: Well, at least the United States has something to do with Mediterranean because there are so many naval and military bases of the US in this region. So, it’s important, of course, to know what are the plans of the United States. On hacking… We made several remarks explaining that the Russian government has nothing to do. The only single fact which the Americans quoted is the owner of a server in California, and the owner lives in Siberia. A young guy who said yes, he owns this server, but he rents it out, and he said “you talk to the people who use this server.” And this was immediately, the next morning, conveyed to the Americans, they know this, but they did not even address, they did not reach this person, they did not raise any issue with him. But for your information, one year ago we formally through Prosecutor-General Office addressed the Department of Justice of the United States with the proposal to have consultations on developing measures to fight cybercrimes. One of the reasons was that the Americans hijack Russian citizens in other countries without informing us, which they must do on the basis of the Consular Convention, accuse them of cybercrime and then demand extradition to the US. And we said: “For you… We also want to make sure that our citizens are not engaged in cybercrime.” So, one year ago, November 2015, we proposed this consultations. Even before these accusations of hacking and so on. In February, in May and then July, I reminded John Kerry that we would really like to have a response to this proposal. He said that this was a very good proposal, that he would talk to the Department of Justice. But after he did, they told us that they are not interested. Only now they send us a proposal to come back to this idea. Fine, we are ready.