Lavrov said it was “too early” at this point to talk about mediators in the process.
(Photo: IMAGO/ITAR-TASS)
Dusseldorf UN Secretary-General António Guterres has proposed the formation of a trilateral group to resolve humanitarian issues in Ukraine, made up of representatives from the United Nations (UN), Kiev and Moscow. This contact group can ensure the safety of escape corridors, Guterres said at a televised press conference with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday.
In this context, he mentioned the need to form a humanitarian corridor for the evacuation of civilians from the heavily contested southeastern Ukrainian port of Mariupol and the Azovstal steel plant there. According to Ukrainian sources, around 1,000 civilians, including women and children, are waiting there.
At the meeting with Guterres, Lavrov warned against arms deliveries to Ukraine. “If things continue like this, the negotiations will hardly bring any result,” he said on Tuesday after talks with the UN chief in Moscow. The talks between Kyiv and Moscow to end the war have so far not brought any tangible results. Russia has troops in Ukraine and will continue to see weapons supplied by the West there as a target, the foreign minister said.
Lavrov stressed that Russia was still ready to negotiate an end to hostilities in Ukraine. But he sees no real interest in Kyiv. On the question of a possible use of mediators in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, Lavrov said: “It’s too early for that.” With regard to the USA, he criticized that the West is now only concerned with defeating Russia.
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Lavrov accused Ukraine and the West of showing no interest in resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine over the past eight years. In addition, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy canceled the agreements of the Minsk peace plan. There was also a UN resolution on the Minsk peace plan, to which no one felt bound, said the Russian chief diplomat.
In fact, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin had effectively terminated the Minsk Agreement shortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A few days earlier, Putin and the Russian parliament had recognized the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent “people’s republics”. As a result, Putin claimed that the pro-Russian separatists had been attacked by Ukraine. Under this pretext he founded the war of aggression, which Russia propagates to this day as a “special military operation”.
UN calls for ceasefire
UN chief Guterres traveled to Moscow on Tuesday to explore options for ending the war in Ukraine. He called himself an “ambassador of peace”. After Foreign Minister Lavrov, Guterres is also to meet Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
Guterres expressed concern about possible war crimes in Ukraine. The allegations against the Russian armed forces must be investigated independently, he demanded. Dozens of bodies were found, some of them tied up, on the ground after the Russian military retreated from the suburbs of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. The images shook the international community.
Before the meeting with Lavrov, the UN Secretary-General had announced that he would work for a ceasefire and an end to the war in Ukraine. The war is also having an impact on food and energy prices around the world, Guterres warned. It is therefore necessary to conduct dialogue and reach a ceasefire in order to find the conditions for a peaceful solution to the conflict.
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Minister Lavrov said that Ukraine has accumulated many problems that need to be resolved. But Russia also wants to talk about the development of the United Nations as a whole. Lavrov complained that there were tendencies in the West to establish a monopolar world. Guterres replied that he was an avowed supporter of a multipolar world.
After his stay in Russia, the UN Secretary-General wants to travel via Poland to Ukraine, where he wants to meet President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday. Guterres has recently come under pressure to take a more active role in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Russian troops invaded Ukraine on February 24.
With agency material
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