Lavrov: Russia No Longer Trusts Western Calls for Ukraine Peace Talks

Russia will no longer trust statements by Western countries about their desire to negotiate a settlement to the conflict in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

"We will no longer believe the West when it says it wants negotiated solutions. That reserve of goodwill and hope has been exhausted completely," the diplomat said.

Lavrov Accuses the West of Imitating Peace Efforts

The minister also accused Western countries of merely imitating a desire for a peaceful settlement of the conflict. According to him, European states have moved away from discussing negotiations and have instead begun issuing open ultimatums to Russia.

"We outlined our assessment of the current situation surrounding Ukraine, including the actions of the West, which, while pretending to be ready for negotiations, has now, as announced by the Europeans themselves, shifted to issuing open ultimatums to the Russian Federation," Lavrov said.

In his view, Western countries continue to call for negotiated solutions that had already been achieved in 2014, 2015, and 2019. "In every one of those cases, the West's guarantees were broken by the West itself; they proved to be false," the minister noted, adding that the agreement reached between Russia and Ukraine in 2022 was also undermined by the West.

"The President clearly reaffirmed that we will continue pursuing the objectives that were set out back in June 2024 during Vladimir Putin's address at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs," the diplomat concluded.

The Minsk Agreements and Previous Negotiations

The Minsk Agreements consisted of two packages of measures aimed at resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine. They were signed in September 2014 (Minsk I) and February 2015 (Minsk II) with mediation by the OSCE and the participation of representatives of Ukraine, Russia, and the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics. The agreements provided for a ceasefire, the withdrawal of heavy weapons, prisoner exchanges, the restoration of Ukraine's control over its state border, and constitutional reform granting special status to certain districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

In 2019, the Normandy Format summit was held in Paris, bringing together Germany, Russia, Ukraine, and France. The meeting was attended by then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and French President Emmanuel Macron. On July 7, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that, on the sidelines of the summit, Putin and Zelensky met to discuss the content of the agreed joint statement and the Minsk Agreements, during which the Ukrainian leader began arguing with the Russian president.

In February 2022, following Russia's recognition of the sovereignty of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, Putin declared that the Minsk Agreements had ceased to exist.

The 2022 Istanbul Talks

Russia and Ukraine held negotiations in the spring of 2022, shortly after the start of Russia's military operation. The round of talks in Istanbul proved to be the most productive, and the two sides came close to reaching an agreement. However, Kyiv later withdrew from the negotiations. In November 2023, David Arakhamia, who headed the Ukrainian delegation in Istanbul, stated that Ukraine abandoned the agreements partly on the advice of then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who visited Kyiv in early April 2022.

On June 14, 2024, during a speech at the Russian Foreign Ministry, Vladimir Putin stated that Russia was prepared to agree to a ceasefire and negotiations if Kyiv fully withdrew its forces from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions and abandoned its plans to join NATO.

Earlier, Russia's Acting Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Anna Evstigneeva, said that although European countries publicly advocate a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Ukraine, their actions continue to obstruct the negotiation process.