The conflict between Moscow and Kiev, as well as the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, is the direct result of the West’s push to create a unipolar world, one which involved NATO’s unabated eastward expansion, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told China’s Xinhua News Agency in an interview published on Saturday.
“The US and NATO have always seen Ukraine as an instrument of containing Russia,” the minister said, adding that the reasons that eventually prompted Moscow to launch its military operation in Ukraine lay with a years-long western policy that included stirring up anti-Russian sentiments among Ukrainians and forcing them to make a “false choice” between the West and Russia.
“It was the West that first instigated and then supported an anti-constitutional coup d’état in Kiev in 2014” which has given rise to an internal Ukrainian conflict the US and its allies never tried to resolve, Lavrov said, as he accused Washington and its allies of “fostering” Kiev’s “aggressive anti-Russian course”and “pushing nationalists towards a military solution” of the crisis in the Donbass.
Washington and Brussels also brushed off Russia’s proposals for security guarantees in Europe in December 2021, the minister said, adding that Moscow was left with no choice but to launch its military operation to protect the people of the Donbass upon the request from the leadership of the two republics Russia had recognized.
Russia is interested in a “peaceful, free, neutral, prosperous and friendly Ukraine,” the minister has explained, adding that Moscow wishes to restore “centuries-long cultural, economic and family ties between Russians and Ukrainians.” He also said that Russian and Ukrainian delegations discuss the details of a potential peace agreement on a daily basis via a video link
According to Lavrov, the document should include provisions on Ukraine’s “neutral, nuclear-free, non-aligned and demilitarized status” as well as guarantees on Ukraine’s security.
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