Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks at an ambassadorial roundtable discussion on resolving the situation around Ukraine, Moscow, September 15, 2023

Your Excellencies,

Colleagues,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Thank you for responding to our invitation and agreeing to take part in a roundtable discussion on the role of various humanitarian and mediatory initiatives. Many of them were advanced in the past 18 months, and all these initiatives deal with Ukraine.

I do not doubt that you realise what is happening there. While working in Moscow, you can access all information sources; unfortunately, the West does not always pay attention to these sources, and it is deliberately trying to sweep truthful and objective information under the carpet.

A real conspiracy is evolving around the issue of talks, and they are trying to turn everything upside down through pseudo-diplomacy. This is exactly what they had done during the initial developments in Ukraine; our Western colleagues, primarily the United States and the United Kingdom, had prioritised them for many years. They invested billions of dollars in the Ukrainian opposition and installed it through an unconstitutional and bloody coup d’état. They started saying from the very outset that their signatures under the political settlement agreement (that the opposition tore up) don’t mean much. They claimed that another stage of the democratic process (this is what they called the coup) had ended, and that this process sometimes assumed unexpected forms.

First of all, the putschists officially abolished the status of the Russian language in Ukraine. The leaders of the Right Sector terrorist organisation announced a march on Crimea to expel all Russians from there. Such were the initial actions and statements of a government that had gained power in Kiev through a putsch. They clearly reflected their Russophobic and racist instincts. Later, these people proved their complete spiritual similarity with Nazism. They praised heroes who had collaborated with Adolf Hitler and those sentenced by the Nuremberg tribunal. They celebrated dates that all normal people associate with the creation of inhuman organisations, including the Waffen SS Galichina Division and other units of the Nazi Reich.

Neither Crimea, nor eastern Ukraine accepted such developments, and they refused to fulfil any instructions of the putschists. For this, they unleashed a war against eastern Ukraine, and protracted efforts were exerted to stop it. This only became possible in February 2015 when the Minsk Agreements were signed. Everyone applauded the fact that it had become possible to agree on ways of restoring the territorial integrity of Ukraine that they worried about so much. Seven years on, everyone realised that neither Ukraine, nor its handlers, specifically, Germany, France and other Western countries, including the United States, did not intend to honour their obligations. Last year, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President Francois Hollande (who had signed the Minsk Agreements) noted openly that this was a play for time, while pumping Ukraine full of weapons. Consequently, the relevant UN Security Council Resolution approving the Minsk Agreements was trampled upon.

To be continued...