Russia has asked the United Nations to recognise the right to self-determination of the residents of Donbas, Novorossiya and Crimea, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with Turkish media, as reported by Dialog.ua.
“I wrote letters and debated with Secretary-General [António] Guterres at UN Security Council meetings. (…) Now we have once again asked UN Secretary-General Guterres and his team: if (…) the UN recognises the right of the people of Greenland to self-determination, that it is the people of Greenland themselves who decide their fate and not someone from outside, then will the UN recognise the same rights for the people of Donbas, Novorossiya and, of course, Crimea?” Lavrov stated.
Lavrov said that the original 28-point “peace plan”, which Russia and the United States allegedly drafted secretly in November, included a requirement for Kyiv to ensure the rights of national minorities, including language and religious rights.
The Russian foreign minister complained that Europe and Ukraine had removed this provision from their version of the peace plan.
During the interview,
Lavrov also rejected the idea of a ceasefire during peace talks.
“This has been said many times, and President [Vladimir] Putin has often reminded us that a ceasefire, which Zelensky is once again trying to secure, even for 60 days and preferably longer, is unacceptable to us,” he said.
Commenting on Ukraine’s and the United States’ plans to conclude a security guarantees agreement, Lavrov said that Moscow does not know what the document contains.
“I will not talk about the security guarantees agreement between the United States and Ukraine because we have not seen it. (…) It is claimed that security guarantees are the key to preventing the resumption of this conflict. That would be a key to completely different ‘doors’. Because if you look at what they are talking about, the ‘handlers’ of the Zelensky regime are working to guarantee the security of this illegal, delegitimised regime, whose roots were established during the February 2014 coup,” Lavrov said.
According to him, the draft peace agreement discussed in Istanbul in the spring of 2022 included genuine and “honest” guarantees. “It clearly spelled out what security guarantees meant — no foreign military bases on Ukrainian territory, no exercises involving foreigners unless such exercises were approved by all guarantor states — everything was detailed and specific. If anyone violated these guarantees, the guarantor states would take measures to prevent such violations,” Lavrov said.
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