Lavrov compared this issue to the visits of African delegations who traveled to Russia and advocated for a peaceful solution, as well as peace proposals from China, Brazil and several other countries, including the League of Arab States.

“All these proposals were dictated by a sincere desire to help reach an agreement and a settlement based on taking into account and eliminating the root causes of the current situation, and on guaranteeing security for all parties,” Lavrov stressed.

“Now the West is promoting the possibility of starting negotiations, meanwhile it loudly and categorically declares that the only basis for negotiations is the peace formula of the Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. There is nothing to discuss, this formula is purely an ultimatum,” he expressed.

The foreign minister drew the attention to the fact that “not a single person who has the slightest common sense” can promote such an ultimatum as an indisputable basis for negotiations, “unless he seeks to disrupt and impede these talks.”

Lavrov also stressed that “when the West begins to spread such provocative rumors about the possibility of a truce, it is apparently testing our willingness to accept its conditions.”

In fact, they do not hide their objective: taking a break of several months, it is not so much an agreement as a temporary truce, and buy time to fill Ukraine with new weapons in addition to those they have already supplied, Lavrov added.

The minister stressed that the West is following the same logic as with the Minsk agreements. “They admitted that no one was going to implement the Minsk agreements, not Germany, not France, much less Ukraine.”

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