Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has told a Russian journalist that the Russian authorities will evaluate Donald Trump’s administration based on its actions. As to Trump’s talk of a swift end to the war in Ukraine, Lavrov says everything he hears is nothing more than a rehash of the Minsk agreements.
“Among those in the Republican Party who currently put forward, as they claim, ‘revolutionary ideas’ on how to end the conflict in Ukraine, no one has ever mentioned that people in Ukraine must regain the right to speak, learn, teach their children and receive information in Russian,” Lavrov said, referencing those in Ukraine who identify as Russian and for whom the language is their mother tongue.
The Russian foreign minister stressed that the Kremlin would not change its position. “We have spoken about this many times and will continue to do so. None of the ‘architects of the Ukrainian agreement’ in the West attach importance to this,” he added. In his opinion, the new U.S. administration also wants to benefit from “weakening Russia and its influence,” because “everything comes down to the desire to weaken Russia as a rival.”
Lavrov argues that the change of power in the United States will not affect Washington’s attitude towards Ukraine and its European allies because the U.S. “will always want to control everything that happens in the vicinity of NATO and, of course, in the NATO space itself.”
