Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, on Friday, said that Ukraine cancelled everything including the Minsk Agreement, which refers to series of deals sought to end the Donbas war fought between armed Russian separatist groups and the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which give special status to small territory especially the right to use the Russian language which is considered as a taboo by the Narcist.
“And it is the regime (Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy) who started the war against these people. That’s why the Minsk agreements were considered the way to stop this. And it was not very difficult to implement the Minsk agreements. It was about the special status for a small part of the east of Ukraine, much smaller than the territory which is controlled by the Russian army now, much smaller,” Lavrov said in the Raisina Dialogue.
Donbas comprises two big eastern regions, Luhansk and Donetsk, which run from outside Mariupol in the south all the way to the northern border with Russia.
“This regime, they cancelled, legally cancelled, everything that has to do with the Russian language. And when the people who did not accept the coup in the east of Ukraine and in Crimea said, guys, leave us alone, we are not going to follow your policies, they will declare a terrorist,” he added.
He stated that the French ambassador to Israel, who participated in the discussion with West and Gorbachev, confirmed that there was a commitment not to expand NATO.
Lavrov further added that there were a lot of things that happened between the lies about not expanding NATO by Ukraine and the anniversary of the war which cannot be “overlooked.”
Recalling the 1999 summit, Lavrov said that in the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, the political declaration was signed by the presidents and the prime ministers which said, security is indivisible, and the OSC participants are all committed to equal and indivisible security.
“Then they stated that each country is free to choose alliances, but in doing so, no country can strive to strengthen its security at the expense of the security of others. And then another principle was signed by the presidents and the prime ministers, according to which no country and no organization in the OSC region can pretend to dominate militarily. If you read it again, it’s clear that NATO violated all these commitments.”
“By the way, it was 1999, and then it was repeated in 2010 at another OSC summit in Kazakhstan. And when we started to ask questions, guys, you committed yourself not to increase your security at the expense of our security. Can you stop expanding NATO? They said, well, this is just political condition,” he added.
Talking about the Minsk agreement, Lavrov said that except for Russian President Putin, who publicly admitted that they never intended to implement this particular Security Council resolution, everyone accepted the Minsk agreement.
“So no delivery on the oral commitments, no delivery on written commitments, no delivery on legally binding commitments. And all this was accompanied by NATO instructors beefing up the Ukrainian Army, and Ukraine getting more and more weapons as Zelenskyy said, we needed the Minsk agreements to buy some time to get more and more weapons to Ukraine. And if you can check the reports of the OSC special monitoring mission, they registered a sharp increase in the shelling of Donbas just in the beginning of February,” Lavrov said in the Raisina Dialogue.
He further stated that this is to defend security, to defend the people, the Russian people, who had been denied by Zelenskyy, who denied the right to use the Russian language in education, in media, in culture, in everything.
“If we see these countries (from the West) they were conquering land and exploiting the people. Unfortunately, the West did not drop its neocolonial habits…West is still promoting their interests without considering interests of global community,” Lavrohad earlier said after G20 meeting in Delhi (ANI)
