MOSCOW, September 04. /ITAR-TASS/. Demands put forward by east Ukraine self-defense forces are in no way out of bound and are quite normal for any civilized European country, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday at a joint news conference with Kyrgyzstan’s Foreign Minister, Erlan Abdyldayev.
“The demands they put forward are not out of bound - they want to live on the land where they were born, where their grandfathers and great-grandfathers were born,” he said.
“They want to participate directly in organizing their life, to elect and to be elected, and to be sure that the language, which they would like to speak themselves and to be spoken by their children, will be the language of their choice,” Lavrov said.
“These are simple and natural wishes that are typical for any civilized European country where ethnic minorities live,” he said.
“Our objective is to activate all the opportunities for putting the situation on the track of negotiations that is still available,” the minister said. “The Contact Group (representatives of the Kiev government, the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics, Russia, and the EU) is the first experience of a roundtable - an instrument that’s been drowned in oblivion somehow.”
Lavrov recalled that a number of roundtables had been held across Ukraine before the presidential election.
“Now the Contact Group is trying to tap a solution that would reflect the readiness to heed the militia fighters and their demands,” Lavrov said.