In-person press briefing by H.E. Mr. Sergey V. Lavrov, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, on his country's foreign relations.
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov today (23 Sep) said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “is going throughout the world asking for money, asking for attention, asking for weapons, asking for other things,” and added that his proposals for ending the conflict are “completely not feasible.”
Lavrov said, “Zelenskyy and everybody who is governing him from Brussels, London, in one word firmly say there is no other basis for peace other than the Zelenskyy format. No other basis for this exists and the Zelenskyy format can be described in different ways, but it is completely not feasible. It is not possible to implement this. It's not realistic and everybody understands this.”
The Russian official said, “nobody wants to seriously show an understanding of what is happening, including those who understand don't wish to do so publicly. And under these circumstances, then if they say it will be on the battlefield fine, it will be on the battlefield.”
Lavrov said, “I think that many were surprised by the statement from the Secretary General at the Security Council meeting, during which he suddenly and unexpectedly, in addition to other unfounded allegations about what is happening in Ukraine, suddenly decided to make a move to deliver a broad passage about children who've gone missing, abducted who are being concealed, those who are subject to hunger and famine and so on and so forth.”
He said, “It was surprising for me to hear this especially about children because the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General on children in armed conflict, Madam Virginia Gamba visited us not so long ago, she spent some days engaged in detailed discussions there were meetings held and shedding light on questions that were of concern to her and all of the responses were provided.”
The Foreign Minister said, “those children the vast majority of these children are children who were living in orphanages whose parents had sent them to these orphanages for various reasons. And when the special military operation began, of course, we took them to safety, but we never tried to conceal the names of these children.”
Turning to the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, he said, “What is happening in Armenia, and a number of other former Soviet member states is that there is a very powerful lobby including through NGOs backed by Western states and are advancing the interests of the US and their allies and these interests include undermining Russia's influence.”
Asked about the Black Sea Grain Initiative, Lavrov responded, “while the Ukrainian part of the package was implemented rather effectively and swiftly the Russian part was not implemented at all. And at the same time, on several occasions while that part of the initiative was still functioning the Ukrainian part the Black Sea corridors that our naval officials opened up for the safe passage of ships carrying greens those same channels were used those corridors were used several times to launch UAVs over the maritime space in order to carry out strikes on Russia.”