New York [US]: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Saturday (local time) said that Ukraine’s blueprint for peace is “not feasible or realistic,” CNN reported.
He said that everyone understands that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s peace formula, which he said cannot include ceding any territory to Russia is not feasible. Lavrov made the remarks in a news conference at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
He said “At the same time, everyone says this is only conditions for negotiation,” according to CNN report.
Asked whether Russia will hold talks the Ukrainian government if Zelenskyy withdrew his decree preventing negotiations with Russia, Lavrov said that’s not what Ukraine is doing. He said Zelenskyy is instead “going throughout the world asking for money” and weapons and attention.
Last year, Zelenskyy presented Ukraine’s 10-point peace formula to world leaders at the G20 Summit in Indonesia’s Bali. The 10-point peace formula includes a path to nuclear safety and food security, a special tribunal for alleged Russian war crimes and a final peace treaty with Moscow.
In the early days of the conflict, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy had proposed meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, CNN reported. However, he has raised concerns about negotiating with Russia and pointed to its past record of reneging on agreements.
Earlier, Sergey Lavrov delivered a speech at the United Nations General Assembly. Calling the West an “empire of lies,” Lavrov slammed the US, European Union and NATO military alliance for their support of Ukraine.
He said governments offering support to Ukraine were part of an effort to “divide the world into democracies and autocracies and dictate only their own neocolonial rules to everyone,” CNN reported.
“The US and its subordinate Western collective are continuing to fuel conflicts which artificially divide humanity into hostile blocks and hamper the achievement of overall aims.
They’re doing everything they can to prevent the formation of a genuine multipolar world order,” Lavrov said, adding, “They are trying to force the world to play according to their own self-centered rules.”
He said that the time was ripe for trust-building measures between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh, and that Moscow’s troops would help that. Lavrov accused the West of trying to force themselves as mediators between the two countries, which he said was not needed.
In his remarks, Lavrov briefly reviewed some earlier grievances on the 19-month war in Ukraine that date back to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. However, he avoided getting into the more recent fighting
