Western sanctions against Russia prove the West’s weakness in influencing Kiev to fulfill the Minsk agreements, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday.
“We aren’t asking and we won’t ask our Western partners to lift these sanctions, and we have never initiated these discussions. But they themselves, during meetings with us and in their public statements, start to get nervous over this topic and begin saying ‘and in regard to sanctions against Russia, the as soon as Russia fulfills the Minsk agreements, then the sanctions will be lifted,’” Lavrov said while delivering a lecture at the Mongolian Foreign Ministry.
“This is their wish and simultaneously their weakness. Our Western partners know quite well that the Minsk agreements don’t contain any reference to Russia, but in practically every paragraph there are tasks that stand before the Ukrainian leadership with dates when these tasks need to be fulfilled. This has all been broken,” Lavrov said.
In making these statement, the West is giving a signal to Kiev “to continue sabotaging the fulfillment of your obligations, and you won’t be punished, Russia will,” Lavrov expounded.