Lavrov Pre-negotiations Presser Selections

Today in Moscow, FM Lavrov held talks with Serbian FM Marija Djuric followed by a joint press conference that lasted 45 minutes and consisted of lengthy remarks by Lavrov about the status of Russian-Serbian relations. However, when it came to the Q&A, the interest wasn’t about the state of relations but about Lavrov’s upcoming mission to Saudi Arabia and his appraisal of the Munich Security Conference, and that interest is clearly shared by many. What follows are selections related to those two items:

Question: According to the Kremlin, on the instructions of President Vladimir Putin, you are going to Riyadh to take part in Russian-US talks.

Sergey Lavrov: This is true.

Question: What do you expect from these talks?

Sergey Lavrov: Whenever we go to talks at the suggestion of our partners, first of all, we want to listen to them.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump spoke by phone, they agreed on the need to leave behind the abnormal period in relations between the two great powers, when, in fact, they did not communicate, except on certain technical and humanitarian issues. The presidents agreed that it is necessary to resume dialogue on all issues that can be resolved in one way or another with the participation of Russia and the United States. Reference was made to the Ukrainian settlement, the situation in the Middle East and a number of other regions of the world that are in a turbulent state.

We will listen to our American interlocutors. We will be ready to respond and report to our leaders, who will make decisions on further steps….

Question: How would you comment on the results of the Munich Security Conference? What caused the hysterical statements by Western leaders during the conference about the need for EU countries to participate in the talks on Ukraine?

Sergey Lavrov: As for the results of the Munich Conference, I can say the following. Everyone must be held accountable for their actions. When someone has been committing lawlessness for many years, violating their own rules of equality, fair competition, the presumption of innocence, the inviolability of property, freedom of expression and freedom of access to information, all this is trampled on without a twinge of conscience, what is "foreign" is being plundered in violation of all norms of international law, the Nazi regime is being encouraged and weapons are being pumped up in order to kill its own citizens. All this is being done in the hope that we will somehow "slip through" and "sit out" under the "nuclear umbrella." This will not happen anymore. We must be held accountable for our actions. This is already said in the Bible.

As for the desire of the countries to participate in the negotiation process on Ukraine, it has already been repeatedly satisfied.

In February 2014, the European Union, including France and Germany, solemnly signed an agreement between the then President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych and the armed opposition. They guaranteed that it would be implemented. The agreement provided for the creation of a transitional government of national unity and early elections. It was necessary to "endure" five or six months. In the morning, the opposition trampled on this agreement.

We began to appeal to the guarantors of this agreement, to our European neighbours (Germany and France). They told us shyly, saying that what happened, happened. Sometimes democracy takes on "bizarre forms" in its development. It was their first chance.

The second chance is the Minsk agreements. The leaders of Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine spent more than seventeen hours verifying every comma in the document on the settlement of the Ukrainian situation by granting a special status to part of Donbass as part of a single Ukrainian state. The UN Security Council resolution unanimously approved this plan.

From the very first days, the Ukrainian side began to violate it: instead of a truce and the withdrawal of troops, there was constant bombing of Donbass, instead of restoring the economic integrity of Ukrainian territory, a water blockade of Crimea and much more. Later, when Ms Angela Merkel and François Hollande retired and began to talk to journalists, they frankly and more than once admitted that they were not going to do anything that they had a hand in. They said that it took time to arm Ukraine. These were their chances.

Just now, there have been "calls" at the Munich Conference. In particular, Andrew Stubb, President of Finland, our close neighbour, once a neutral state, which in every possible way advocated "all the good and against all the bad," said that it is necessary to conclude a truce first of all and use it to strengthen Ukraine militarily.

It turns out that the Europeans' "philosophy" has not gone anywhere. Therefore, I do not know what they should do at the negotiating table. If they will "squirt" some sly ideas about freezing the conflict in this way, and according to their customs, temper and habits, they themselves will have in mind the continuation of the war, then why invite them there?…

Question (retranslated from English): The Trump administration has stated that in order to achieve long-term peace and a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, both sides will have to make huge concessions and compromises. In accordance with this, what territories is Russia ready to give up?

Sergey Lavrov: Are you talking about Denmark and Greenland?

Compromises have been reached more than once during the Ukrainian crisis, primarily thanks to the efforts of the Russian side.

There was an agreement on a settlement after the Maidan in February 2014, and then US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland discussed with the US ambassador to Ukraine the composition of the new government after the coup d'état. Back then, in 2014, she determined the place that the United States assigns to the European Union in deciding the fate of Ukraine. Remember? A compromise was reached, and in the morning (I just recalled this) the opposition carried out a bloody coup d'état in violation of all agreements.

The second compromise was called the Minsk Agreements, approved by the UN Security Council. They became not a compromise, but an international law. It was also trampled underfoot, first of all, by the Ukrainian junta and those who guaranteed the Minsk Agreements – Berlin and Paris. They openly admitted this.

The United States watched with satisfaction from across the ocean what was happening, supplying weapons to the Kyiv regime and supporting it in every possible way.

A compromise was close in Istanbul in April 2022, and President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly spoken about this in detail.

It is not yet clear which of the US representatives discussing how to approach the Ukrainian crisis will be authorised by President Donald Trump to speak on Ukraine on behalf of the administration in Washington. They are also talking about compromises. This is increasingly like a "scientific dispute", as it sounded at the Munich Conference.

But they are really beginning to mention the topic of territorial concessions. We need to read history. President Vladimir Putin is also calling for this. Territorial concessions to what is now called Ukraine were made by the Soviet leadership when the USSR was formed. The vast territories that were developed by the Russian people for centuries, where they built cities, factories and ports, organised life, industry and agriculture, were (for reasons that President Vladimir Putin has also mentioned many times) included in the Ukrainian SSR. Naturally, this is based on the assumption that all the ideals of brotherhood, justice and equality will be respected by the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic as well as by all other Union republics of the USSR.

For a while, it worked. The Ukrainian people contributed to our common Great Victory, to the victory of all the peoples of the Soviet Union over Hitler's Germany, but then "something went wrong." Nationalist sentiments matured in Ukraine at first quietly, and then quite openly, especially when the crisis of the Soviet Union came and it ceased to exist.

These nationalist, even Nazi, Bandera sentiments of those who were collaborators with the Nazi invaders began to grow stronger. They began to be less embarrassed. They began to penetrate the public consciousness. Work began on recruiting supporters, on the creation of first underground, and then open combat formations, which flaunted with the emblems of SS divisions.

In the end, it was the representatives of these forces, pushed by the US administration, who carried out a coup d'état in 2014. The first thing they did was to announce that they would abolish the status of the Russian language. When people in Crimea and Donbass said, "Don't touch us, we won't touch you, even though you came to power illegally, leave us alone." They were immediately declared terrorists and started a war against them using the army, aviation, artillery and tanks. Many international conventions and treaties prohibit the use of the army against their own people in internal conflicts.

But, nevertheless, a coup d'état took place. We tried to "bring him out of the peak" of the tragedy of the Ukrainian people (you know, about the Minsk Agreements). Nothing worked. Petr Poroshenko and Vladimir Zelensky came to power as "presidents of peace." They lied to their voters. They are still lying. If you read the statements of those who work with Vladimir Zelensky and call themselves the "government of Ukraine" and "the President's Office," you will see the words "non-humans," "Russians," "creatures," and "they must be killed." Ukrainian officials, such as former Ukrainian Ambassador to Kazakhstan Pavel Vrublevsky, who said on camera that their main task is to kill as many Russians as possible so that their children have less "work."

Long before the special military operation, Vladimir Zelensky himself, in an interview in August 2021, when asked about his attitude towards Ukrainians who are involved in Russian culture and history, said that they have no future, and his advice is that if they really feel that they belong to everything Russian, then for the sake of the future of their children and grandchildren, let them go to Russia.

The Ukrainian armed forces are acting worse than Hitler's murderers. Look at the atrocities they are committing in the territories. Do you want these Nazi habits in the settlement negotiations to have even the idea that some territories still need to be ceded? How to concede - with Russian people or without people, with only rare earth metals?

There are those who fantasize about how the United States can help a settlement. We do not hide the fact that such assistance may well exist. Moreover, the United States has played a major role in the Ukrainian crisis from its very beginning. I mentioned how then US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland formed the putschist government a few days before the coup d'état.

If we are talking about serious diplomacy, it is better to first understand the history of the issue, to see why the Russian language is banned in all spheres of life in Ukraine, why the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church is banned there (this is a gross violation of numerous conventions and Article 1 of the UN Charter) and to understand why none of the numerous initiatives that have been voiced so far from different parts of the world remembers these human rights enshrined in the UN Charter. They only say that territorial concessions are needed. Why? In order to destroy Russians there, as they are now being destroyed in the Kursk Region and other regions of the Russian Federation? I will probably stop here.

Question: So you don't think that territorial compromises are possible?

Sergey Lavrov: I have answered this question.

Maria Zakharova: We will translate it into English for him later. Misunderstanding, probably. [My Emphasis]

IMO, it’s mandatory to approach the negotiations from a position of 100% reality as Lavrov described above. In 2014, the Outlaw US Empire initiated an undeclared war on Russia using Ukrainians as their primary weapon. As was recently noted by Escobar who is in Liberated Ukraine, NATO used Ukrainians like hockey pucks. The initiator of the war is now losing badly and suing for peace but wants to dictate terms as if it’s the victor. That won’t get the negotiations anywhere but rapidly ended. It’s clear from the Munich Conference that the EU hawks have zero sense of reality, are incurable zealots and thus have nothing to negotiate. As Lavrov noted, the EU was merely an auxiliary to the process of waging war on Russia. They played their role while the war was directed by a series of US presidents, including Trump, but most prominently Biden and his team of criminals. In other words, an aggressive war was started by the Outlaw US Empire aimed at Russia using Ukraine as both weapons and ammo with the initial goal being the capture of Crimea. Yes, this aggressive war has differed from previous examples, but nevertheless it remains an aggressive war with all the legal consequences that were announced at Nuremburg.

The question I have is will Russia adopt the above described position in negotiations? Obama, Biden, Nuland, Pyatt, and a host of others are those guilty of waging an aggressive war and are thus responsible for all the crimes that ensued. IMO, a majority of Russians will agree with my description, but I see very few articles arguing for it, although I certainly haven’t read or watched all Russian media sources. Also, Russia’s government hasn’t gone quite that far in its own description, unless I missed something somewhere. Again, Team Trump represents both the naked aggressor and loser of the war the Outlaw US Empire initiated and have essentially zero leverage. What Rubio ought to be doing is begging for mercy for those who began the war. And I’ll bet Rubio voted for every single act of legislation that allowed the war’s prosecution and really ought to recuse himself since he too is a criminal under the Nuremburg statues. Remember, Russia wants—demands—the roots of the war be uprooted and fumigated. Those roots go back to WW2 and its end when OSS and MI6 combined to save Nazism by abetting many to escape Europe and to support the continued existence of the Nazi OUN. If those historical facts aren’t unearthed then they’ll reappear or rather are already present in the current crop of European Hawks who have swallowed the BigLie that Russia is an aggressive nation bent on their destruction. Rubio is also one of those hawks and is the wrong man for the task.

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