FROM NBC NEWS: Russia’s top diplomat laid out the wide gaps between Moscow and Kyiv and put a damper on hopes that President Donald Trump will propel a swift end to the war in Ukraine.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker in an exclusive interview taped Friday that there was no meeting planned between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and that key issues — including security guarantees for Ukraine and territorial disputes— remain unresolved.
Putin “is ready to meet with President Zelenskyy, provided this meeting is really going to decide something,” he said. “To meet, for Zelenskyy to have another opportunity to be onstage, is not what we believe is useful.”
Lavrov claimed Ukraine is hindering the peace process, as are European leaders. He said they “don’t want peace.”
“They say, ‘We cannot allow defeat of Ukraine. We cannot allow Russia to win.’ They speak in these terms: win, defeat and so on,” he said.
Russia reportedly wants Ukraine to give up Russian-annexed Crimea and its eastern Donbas, and to agree that it won’t join NATO.
“Zelenskyy said no to everything,” Lavrov said. “How can we meet with a person who is pretending to be a leader?”
Lavrov said Ukraine must “let people go” and Russia claims that Kyiv has committed genocide against Russian speakers in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. Lavrov said the “special military operation,” which Ukraine calls a invasion, was launched to protect people identifying as ethnically Russian “who live on those lands, whose ancestors lived there for centuries and centuries.” They Ukraine is repressing Russian language and culture.
Most of the international community maintains that Russia launched its invasion under false pretenses. And while Lavrov claims Russian attacks – which have continued despite efforts at peace- only target sites linked to the Ukrainian military and “never targeted the civilian targets,” the U.N. says Russia has killed or injured close to 50,000 civilians during the war, scandalously hitting maternity wards, churches, schools, and hospitals.
Lavrov also indicated that a peace agreement could not be signed with Zelenskyy. Russia claims his leadership in not legitimate since Ukrainian elections were postponed amid martial law.
“When we come to a stage when you have to sign documents, we would need a very clear understanding by everybody that the person who is signing is legitimate,” he said. “And according to the Ukrainian constitution, Mr. Zelenskyy is not at the moment.”
