Echoing Vladimir Putin’s outreach to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced today at a press conference: “We are ready to hold talks at any moment, once the Ukrainian Armed Forces respond to our President’s call, end their resistance and lay down their arms. No one plans to attack and oppress them; let them return to their families, and let us give the Ukrainian people a chance to decide their future.”
He went on to insist that Russia had always called for negotiations. “There is no shortage of talks but when talks are replaced with blatant sabotage, while Russia is accused of allegedly failing to implement the Minsk accords, it’s effrontery—which is what some of our Western colleagues are famous for, but this time, it just went beyond all limits, because it was accompanied by a continuous deterioration of the Russian-speaking population’s situation in Ukraine.... I have already mentioned what they did to the Russian language, the Russian-language education and the Russian Orthodox Church. Try to apply it all to your own traditions, this is what I say to our Western colleagues. If they did, they would understand that it is impossible to tolerate such things.”
