Photo: the Embassy of Russia in Belgium/facebook.com
Russia wishes to hope that the new Ukrainian authorities will deal with the problems left behind by the former president Pyotr Poroshenko, the head of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov has stated. He said this during the informal meeting of OSCE countries foreign ministers in Slovakia, TASS reports.
First and foremost it is necessary to resolve the problem of restriction of national minorities’ rights, Lavrov believes. It is also necessary to resist the intensification of aggressive nationalism and neo-Nazism and to protect the rights of national minorities in the sphere of religion, education and language, the head of Russian diplomacy said. Their rights were grossly violated by the laws that Poroshenko’s regime adopted.
Lavrov also reminded Kiev that the Minsk agreements were aimed at establishing a direct dialogue with the Donbas. For the time being, quite contradictory statements are heard from the side of the new Ukrainian president. He assures that he is ready to fulfill the Minsk agreements, then rejects the possibility of a dialogue with Donetsk and Lugansk.
As a result of open intervention in the internal affairs of Ukraine by Western countries five years ago, there was a coup in Kiev, radicals came to power, flared up another conflict. And all these years, it was not able to solve it due to the fact that Poroshenko directly sabotaged the implementation of the Minsk agreements, the head of the Foreign Ministry said.
Lavrov regretted that the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly refused to support the resolution on preventing the revival of neo-Nazism. Our European partners should be ashamed, he is sure. The Russian minister promised that Moscow would continue to raise this topic in the UN, in the Council of Europe and on the OSCE platform.
As for the proposal of President Zelensky to meet with Vladimir Putin in Minsk in the presence of the heads of other states, such proposals should be made not through Facebook, but through diplomatic channels. For the settlement of the conflict in Donbass, formats approved by the UN Security Council have already been created, and they should be used first, the minister stressed.
Russkiy Mir
