Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday that the revised peace plan for Ukraine should reflect the “spirit and letter” of the understanding reached between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump during their meeting in Alaska in August, Reuters reported, BTA reported.
During a press conference in Moscow, Lavrov added that Russia welcomes the initial version of the US plan for Ukraine and awaits the revised version that Washington is coordinating with Ukraine and Europe.
“President Putin commented in detail on President Trump’s peace plan a few days ago, at the end of last week, at a meeting with the permanent members of the Security Council. Our assessments remain valid in the sense that the key provisions of the Trump plan are based on the understandings reached in Anchorage during the Russian-US meeting in August of this year. And these principles are reflected in the plan that we welcomed," Lavrov said.
He added that the Russian side has not officially received the "interim version", agreed with Ukraine and Europe, but maintains channels of communication with its American colleagues. "If the spirit and letter of Anchorage are erased there according to the key understandings that we have reached - then, of course, the situation will be fundamentally different", added the head of Russian diplomacy.
European countries have squandered their chance to participate in resolving the Ukrainian crisis, Lavrov also said.
"Every time progress was made, an agreement – whether interim, or more sustainable, long-term – these agreements collapsed. Now, when our European colleagues loudly declare that there will be no new "Minsk", that nothing should be decided without Europe, because it directly affects us – and Europe has failed in every respect since 2014“, he added.
The Russian Foreign Minister stated that it was Europe that violated the Minsk agreements, which France and Germany openly acknowledged. He also emphasized that Europe, represented by former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, dissuaded Volodymyr Zelensky from signing an agreement that the Ukrainian delegation itself proposed in Istanbul in April 2022.
Lavrov also commented that French President Emmanuel Macron's statement regarding Ukraine has nothing to do with a peaceful settlement of the conflict, but are “just dreams“.
“Macron today made an aggressive statement that the only problem of Ukraine is Russia and its demands; that Russia is waging a strategic confrontation with the Europeans, that we (the Europeans) must prove that we will never surrender to the force that threatens us. He said that after the settlement he plans to send troops to the Kiev region, Odessa“, Lavrov recalled the words of the French president.