The foreign minister of Russia said his country welcomes talks over Ukraine but has ruled out a cease-fire.
Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, stated at a press conference after his speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday in New York that if the West is attempting to settle the Ukrainian issue through force, Moscow will respond correspondingly.
Russia’s top ambassador told reporters at the 78th session of the assembly that “[the West] generally says that Russia must be defeated on the battlefield.”
He remarked, “[…] No one wants to seriously show understanding of what is happening – [and] those who understand really do not want to show it publicly,” before adding, “If the West wants to resolve the issue on the battlefield, so be it.”
Four days after Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky and US president Joe Biden spoke at the UNGA, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called the entire West a “empire of lies” in his remarks.
The Kremlin’s foreign minister also charged that the United States and “its subordinate Western collective” were aiming to “artificially divide humanity into hostile blocs.” According to Lavrov, it is a strategy used to “force the world to play by their self-centered rules.”
At the presser, Lavrov added that some “peace formulas” pertaining to the crisis in Ukraine, including any that have President Zelensky’s endorsement, “are unrealistic, and everybody knows it.”
The ambassador did, however, say that Moscow is willing to enter into negotiations to put an end to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. However, he ruled out the idea of Moscow agreeing to a ceasefire since, in his words, “Moscow has already been deceived once.”
