Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov gave an extensive TV interview, whose full transcript was posted today on the Foreign Ministry website, in which one of the many topics covered was his meeting Aug. 25 in Moscow with the head of Vatican diplomacy, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher. Lavrov began:
“There were no secrets between us... Naturally, given Mr. Gallagher’s interest in achieving a swift settlement, ... I pointed out that we had never been short of goodwill, and that back in 2014 we had supported the agreement that had been reached, only to see it trampled upon the very next morning, to the applause of those who had guaranteed its inviolability.
“A year later, there were the Minsk agreements, in which Russia acted as a guarantor alongside Europeans—Angela Merkel and François Hollande. They were sabotaged in their entirety, despite the fact that in 2019 Emmanuel Macron, who had by then become President of France, gathered the so-called Normandy Four, together with Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel and Vladimir Zelensky, and we adopted yet another document. It reaffirmed the need to honor the Minsk agreements, especially since they had been endorsed by the UN Security Council.
“More recently, Angela Merkel, François Hollande and Pyotr Poroshenko all said that they had never intended to implement any of this. They needed to buy time to arm themselves. And then, of course, there were the maneuvers of the then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in April 2022, when he did not let the Ukrainians sign the document which they themselves had drafted and initiated during the Istanbul talks. This was especially pertinent as my interlocutor, Paul Richard Gallagher, is also from the British Isles.
“I think he understood everything. I can say that he did not bring forward any counterarguments, apart from the general refrain that ‘we need to bring this to an end as soon as possible.'
“Here is what I told him. What the West is currently pushing for is stopping along the line of contact, with a ceasefire but no lasting peace. At the same time, it has been declared for everyone to hear that, once hostilities have been suspended or stopped in this way, neither Ukraine nor the West, at least as far as Europe is concerned, will recognize the territories under Russia’s control as part of the Russian Federation, including under the Russian Constitution. They even proudly say that there must first be a ceasefire, followed by efforts to restore the 1991 borders by peaceful means. Then ‘stabilization forces’ would be deployed in the territory remaining under Vladimir Zelensky’s control, with the UK and France at the forefront of this, should we say, unhinged initiative.
