Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that no one is going to occupy Ukraine. The purpose of the military special operation is demilitarization and denazification, and Russia is interested in the people of Ukraine being independent.
“We are interested in the Ukrainian people being independent, that they have a government that will represent all their diversity and that they are not in a situation where they are under complete external control, sharpened to encourage neo-Nazism, to encourage genocide Russians,” Sergey Lavrov said following the results negotiations with representatives Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the LPR and DPR.
The meeting was broadcast on the channel “Russia 24” and media platform “Looking”.
Sergey Lavrov explained the norms of the Budapest Memorandum, according to which the signatory countries, including Russia, must ensure the security of Ukraine in exchange for the abandonment of nuclear weapons stockpiles.
According to Lavrov, in the Budapest memorandum “there is no obligation to recognize anti-state coups and to meet the regime that has declared genocide against part of its own people.”
Lavrov recalled that the West supported the Kiev regime in the destruction of the Minsk agreements, Kiev announced that there was no alternative for Ukraine to join NATO and began to threaten with nuclear weapons. Under these conditions, Moscow could not but respond to the request of the DPR and LPR for military assistance.