A long-term solution to the Ukrainian crisis cannot be ensured only through a ceasefire or a halt to hostilities, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.
“A long-term solution to this problem cannot be ensured only through a ceasefire or stopping hostilities on the line of contact,” Sergey Lavrov wrote in the article “Russia and Vietnam: 75 Years of Friendship, Trust and Mutual Assistance” for the International Life magazine.
The foreign minister noted that in order to solve the Ukrainian crisis, it was necessary to eradicate its root causes.
“It is necessary, first of all, to eliminate the threats to Russia’s security that have arisen as a result of NATO’s eastward expansion and attempts to draw Ukraine into the North Atlantic Alliance. It is no less important to achieve full respect for human rights in the territories remaining under the control of the Kiev regime, which since the violent seizure of power in 2014 has been pursuing a line of extermination of everything connected with Russia and the Russian world,” Lavrov added.
Earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said that Russia continued to fight “neo-Nazism” in Ukraine.
