Lavrov has no new routes to get out of the Minsk deadlock
Moscow will not conduct any dialogue with Kiev until the Ukrainian leadership either begins to implement the Minsk agreements or officially abandons them.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated this in an interview with Vladimir Solovyov, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The whole process that we are now observing (on resolving the conflict in Donbass - approx. ed.), with the mandatory preservation of the Minsk agreements on the table, means that the discrediting of the Ukrainian leadership is in full swing,” the minister said.
“You play chess with them, and they play checkers or Chapaya with you,” Solovyov noted.
"No, why. We don't play any chess. Here are the Minsk agreements, and we don’t talk to them at all – implement them, period,” Lavrov replied.
“Oh, this is what I like. And no movement. And if they don’t do it, then what?” - asked Solovyov.
In response, Lavrov repeated his previously repeatedly voiced proposal for Kyiv to break the Minsk agreements itself.
There was no clarification on what the residents of Donbass, who have been suffering from shelling and blockade for seven years, should do.
“Ukraine itself, as I understand it, now wants the Minsk agreements to cease to exist. But let them say it themselves.
When Mr. Zelensky says: “These agreements are bad, but they allow us to maintain sanctions against Russia.” Here we say to the Germans and French - guys, we have been saying for a long time that when you wrote down that “Russia and I will communicate normally when it fulfills the Minsk agreements” (although no one mentioned us there, only Kiev, Donetsk and Lugansk). Therefore, if you maintain these principles of yours with your demands on Russia, then Zelensky will react this way. He doesn’t do anything, you are Orwellian in saying that Russia must comply, but the sanctions remain. And he is happy about it. For God's sake.
Honestly, I’m even glad that we have such a history with these sanctions - we have finally learned to understand, though not completely, that we need to rely only on ourselves,” Lavrov concluded.
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