Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke to reporters this morning in Vientiane, Laos, where he has been attending the 31st ASEAN Regional Forum. According to a series of reports in TASS, among the points he made were the following:
• Moscow has no illusions regarding Western countries’ approaches to the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis, Lavrov said. He contrasted the Western rejection of the 2014 Crimea referendum to the separation of Kosovo from Serbia, which the West applauded as an expression of “the principle of self-determination of peoples.”
