MOSCOW, February 23. /TASS/. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres made several statements on the situation in eastern Ukraine that are not compatible with his status, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, opening talks with UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen on Wednesday.

"To our great regret, the UN Secretary General whom you are representing turned out to be susceptible to pressure by the West and recently made several statements incompatible with his status and his authority under the UN Charter," he said.

The Russian top diplomat noted that Moscow conveyed to Guterres its assessment of his statements. According to Lavrov, the UN Secretary General has never expressed support for the necessity to implement the Minsk Accords and the UN Security Council resolution on the same matter.

"With regards to the situation in Ukraine, the [UN] secretary general has not raised his voice even once to support the necessity of complying with the requirements of the Minsk Package of Measures and Resolution 2202 of the [UN] Security Council which directly demand to resolve all issues by coordination between Kiev, Donetsk and Lugansk. Nobody mentioned this in the West. And, unfortunately, the secretary general followed this sad example," the Russian foreign minister said.

Earlier, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres made a number of statements with regards to the situation in eastern Ukraine, criticizing the recognition of the DPR and LPR by Russia as well as asserting that he wouldn’t consider Russian servicemen in Donbass as peacekeepers.