Meeting with Ukraine's top diplomat shows nothing can replace negotiation process: Russia

MOSCOW/ANTALYA, Turkiye

Thursday’s meeting with Ukraine’s top diplomat showed that nothing can replace the negotiation process, said the Russian foreign minister after a tripartite meeting with his Ukrainian and Turkish counterparts in Turkiye – the highest-level meeting of its kind since the war began two weeks ago.

Speaking at a press conference after the talks, Sergey Lavrov warned the West against giving Ukraine arms, claiming that countries that do so “create a threat to themselves because those arms lack controls on their use.”

“Foreign colleagues, including the EU, act dangerously when they deliver deadly weapons to Ukraine,” said Lavrov, adding that “those who send weapons to Ukraine, (or) encourage mercenaries, will be responsible for their actions.”

On Russia’s bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine on Wednesday, Lavrov said, “The Western media twisted facts about the bombed maternity house in Mariupol, as there were no patients there,” adding that Moscow gave the UN evidence that the facility was being used by the Azov battalion, a Ukrainian militia that has been linked to Nazism.

Lavrov also claimed that Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy agreed to Thursday’s meeting to “show off,” not to genuinely address problems.

He added that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not refusing to hold a meeting with Zelenskyy but that more preparatory work needs to be done.

“Putin never avoids contacts. We just don't want these contacts to happen (just) for words,” said Lavrov.

Russia would not have started the “military operation” in Ukraine if the West had not rejected Moscow’s proposal for security guarantees, said Lavrov, also claiming: “Everything Russian was and is being attacked in Ukraine.”

‘No nuclear war’

“The West attacked Yugoslavia because it does not want big states in Balkans, and the same may be true regarding Russia,” he said.

“The only thing the West wants from Ukraine is for it to constantly work against Russia,” he claimed.

Lavrov also said Moscow never used oil or gas as weapons, and that the current “energy crisis” was created by talk of an embargo on the use of Russian hydrocarbons.

Lavrov also said that does not believe, and does not want to believe, in the possibility of a nuclear war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s putting his country’s nuclear forces on high alert since the war on Ukraine began on Feb. 24 has sparked new fears of a nuclear confrontation.

The foreign ministers of Turkiye, Ukraine, and Russia met on Thursday with the aim of reaching a lasting peace as the Russia-Ukraine war has entered its third week.

The high-level tripartite meeting began at 11.20 a.m. local time (0820GMT) on the sidelines of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in Turkiye and lasted for more than an hour.