Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov masterfully replied to questions posed today by Rossiya-1 TV, which asked about President Putin’s decision to recognize the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics, and specifically on the response of UN officials who waved around UN documents to charge that Russia has violated Ukraine’s sovereignty. Broadly, he explained what has gone on over the past seven years, since the 2014 Maidan coup, how the Minsk agreements were agreed to and then sabotaged with the full complicity—or cowardice—of the European Union. He observed how Europe has hypocritically dealt with the Donbas conflict only because it involves Russia, when it showed far more flexibility in dealing with other Eastern European regions—Kosovo for example—with similar ethnic and cultural conflicts. But with its “conniving and permissive attitude,” it defends Kiev when it refuses to speak with representatives of Donetsk or the Luhansk republics as the Minsk agreement stipulated.
Usefully, Lavrov tore apart the arguments of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and others who are screaming that Russia has violated the UN charter, and Ukraine’s territorial integrity, by citing the exact UN declarations and documents that prove that it is Ukraine that has violated the letter and spirit of the UN Charter and the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States. On the matter of sovereignty and territorial integrity, the latter states that it must strictly apply to “states conducting themselves in compliance with the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples… and thus possessed of a government representing the whole people belonging to the territory without distinction as to race, creed or color.”
No one can say, Lavrov pointed out, that Ukraine’s regime has “represented the whole people living on the territory of the country after the 2014 coup. Many regions of Ukraine rejected that anti-constitutional event, which opened up a tragic page in the history of Ukraine. What happened in Crimea and in Ukraine’s eastern regions is proof that millions of people in Ukraine rejected that government and the regime at the time.” Detailing how Ukraine systematically dismantled the Minsk agreement, as it was originally conceived, and that Europe did nothing to prevent this, Lavrov pointed out that “we also understand that our colleagues are now trying to pin the blame for the breakdown of the Minsk agreements on Russia. Our European, American and British colleagues will not stop and will not sit still until they have exhausted all opportunities for `punishing’ Russia,” with crippling sanctions. “We’ve grown used to this…. We know that they will impose sanctions in any case, with or without pretext.” He pointed to the “regrettable” role of the EU in the 2014 Maidan coup. It was the guarantor of agreements, but then just folded, refusing to recognize that a coup had occurred.
Lavrov had many more things to say, including about Ukrainian President Zelensky, whom he described as an “unbalanced and dependent person who is under the direct control of his American curators.” Despite everything, he said, Russia is still open to dialogue, “if our partners accept Russia’s legitimate concerns regarding legally binding security guarantees in Europe…. This dialogue must be based on the implementation of all the obligations adopted in the past with regard to ensuring equal and indivisible security for all in our common region.”
