Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said he is ready to meet with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, but Moscow will not give up its conditions for ending the war in Ukraine, Reuters reports.
Lavrov, who has not been seen in public since late October, told state news agency RIA Novosti that both he and Rubio understand the need for regular communication. So far, US President Donald Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine have failed. In October, Trump announced that he would meet with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in Budapest, but just days later the White House announced that plans had changed and the planned meeting was canceled. Rumors then spread that Putin had sidelined Lavrov.
Lavrov said on the 9th of November that it was important to talk about the Ukraine issue, and that he had spoken to Rubio by phone and was ready to meet in person.
It has been almost four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and Russian forces are trying to advance. The Russians currently control about 19% of Ukraine’s territory. Moscow believes the occupied territory is now legally part of Russia, but
Kyiv and its Western partners have said they will never recognize it.
The Russian foreign minister said that the understanding reached between Putin and Trump in Alaska on the 15th of August was based on Moscow’s demands in the summer of 2024 and ideas expressed by US envoy Steve Witkoff. Putin’s demands include Ukraine abandoning its plan to join NATO and the complete withdrawal of Kyiv’s forces from territories it claims as its own – Donbass in eastern Ukraine and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the country’s south. Moscow currently controls Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, almost all of Luhansk, about 80% of Donetsk, about 75% of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, and small areas elsewhere.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has acknowledged that some territories could be temporarily recognized as de facto occupied, but has rejected the possibility of recognizing them as legally belonging to Russia. He has said that he has no right to return the territory, and the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces would expose both Ukraine and its European allies to new attacks by Russia.
Lavrov said that the Russians are waiting for confirmation that the agreement in Alaska remains in force. He added that, speaking of the United States, no one questions Russia’s territorial integrity and the choice of the people of Crimea, Donbass and Novorossiya to reunite with their historical homeland. Novorossiya is the term used by Russians for the southeastern regions of Ukraine that became part of the Tsarist empire in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is also referred to as a pro-Russian movement that seeks to restore Moscow’s control.
Asked about European plans to use nearly 210 billion dollars worth of frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine, Lavrov said there was no legal way to do so. Moscow would respond to any use of the assets.
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