Russia rules out the use of nuclear weapons

The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has announced that the next phase of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine has begun, focused on the “complete liberation” of the pro-Russian Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Also assured that Russia “is not considering the possibility of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine.” “We are talking about conventional weapons only,” he insisted.

“The operation in eastern Ukraine is aimed, as already announced, at the complete liberation of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics. This operation will continue, the next phase of this special operation is starting,” he said Tuesday in an interview with the television network India Today, broadcast by his department.

“And, it seems to me, now will be an important moment in this special operation,” added Lavrov, the first senior Russian official to publicly confirm that Russia’s great battle for Donbas has begun.

Lavrov argued that Ukraine failed to “value” the withdrawal of Russian troops three weeks ago from the kyiv and Chernigov regions in the north of the country, and from the Sumi region in the northeast.

“We changed the configuration of our military presence in Ukraine, this was announced immediately after the meeting in Istanbul” on March 29, he noted.

“We said that since we believe that (the Ukrainians) have put under consideration what could form the basis of an agreement, we, as a gesture of goodwill, changed the configuration in the Chernigov and kyiv regions, but this was not appreciated, but Bucha was organized immediately,” he said.

Lavrov thus referred to the killing of civilians discovered in Bucha after the withdrawal of Russian troops from the kyiv region, of which Ukraine and the West accuse Russia, which in turn describes what happened as a “staging”.

The foreign minister assured that Russia “will not rest until the truth is established” about what happened in Bucha.

Lavrov maintained that “this plot” unfolded in the same way as that “of the Skripals, Litvinenko and Navalni and the Malaysia Airlines Boeing”, referring to the poisoning or attempts to poisoning of two former Russian spies and opponent Alexei Navalniof which the West accuses Russia, in addition to the shooting down of flight MH-17 in eastern Ukraine by a BUK missile that belonged to that country.

The head of Russian diplomacy also assured that Russia does not intend to change “the regime” in Ukraine.

“We are not going to change the regime in Ukraine, we have talked about this many times. We want the Ukrainians to decide for themselves how they want to live,” he said, despite having justified the offensive in Ukraine at the beginning of the military campaign with the “denazification” of the neighboring country and referring on several occasions to the “Nazi regime” in kyiv.

He also considered that the West took advantage of the Ukrainian presidentVolodymyr Zelensky, for allegedly pressuring him to ignore the Minsk Peace Agreements for Donbas, where the pro-Russian forces of Donetsk and Lugansk and the Ukrainian Army had been fighting since 2014.

“They did everything possible to reinforce in him his desire to ignore the Minsk Agreements,” he said.

In Lavrov’s opinion, one cannot serious negotiations with Zelensky, for this, he stated, “constantly change your point of view in diametrically opposite directions.

“He speaks a lot. Depends on what you drink or smoke, it says a lot“said the head of Russian diplomacy in response to a question about Russia’s alleged intention to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine.