“Every time another agreement, always accepted by Russia, is broken, Ukraine shrinks in size.” That was the pithy message Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov delivered at his press conference ön Sept. 28, after addressing the UN General Assembly Debate. He cited David Arakhamiya, Ukraine’s chief delegate to the Istanbul talks with Russia in 2022 had said in a recent interview that “then Prime Minister of the U.K. Boris Johnson visited them and told them that no agreements were necessary. Just fight on and they will pitch in weapons and money.” Lavrov explained how in February 2014, the elected President Viktor Yanukovych and the opposition had signed an agreement to hold elections, which the Western guarantors and the opposition double-crossed within 24 hours. “If that agreement had been observed, Ukraine would now have the 1991 borders that Zelenskyy cannot stop talking about. Who asked them to undermine their own legitimacy? For as long as this regime remains in power, this legitimacy will remain undermined,” insisted Lavrov. “I have given you the facts. If Ukraine continues its course and uses more tricks to win time, it will fail.”
Responding to the first question, that the day before former U.S. President Trump had met with Zelenskyy, and “He promised that if he wins the elections in November, he will quickly resolve the issue of war,” Lavrov began his reply (which included his remarks above in his conclusion): “D.Trump said several months ago that he would need 24 hours for this. Now the wording is different.
“We will welcome any initiatives that will lead to the desired result. And there can be only one—a settlement of this problem based on the elimination of the root causes of the Ukrainian crisis.”
He singled out as root causes, as he had explained them in his UNGA remarks: “NATO was doing exactly this—expanding its expansion, swallowing up states, developing their territories with its military equipment and infrastructure. Ukraine was next in line. This created direct threats to the security of the Russian Federation. … Our Western colleagues, for any reason or without, put human rights in the foreground. … But in the case of the Ukrainian crisis, the West does not remember human rights at all. … [T]the Russian language (from early childhood education right up to universities) has been legislatively exterminated in Ukraine. All Russian-language media have either been expelled from Ukraine or closed. … Russian-language books are being thrown out of libraries, as was the case in Hitler’s Germany. The canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church has been banned. …
