ANTALYA, March 10. /TASS/. Moscow hoped to settle issues of security in Europe by diplomatic means to the very last, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday after talks with his Ukrainian and Turkish counterparts, Dmitry Kuleba and Mevlut Cavusoglu.
"To the very last, we wanted to settle the issue by diplomatic means. We presented detailed documents on our bilateral agreement with the United States and a draft agreement with NATO on all key matters of European security," he said, adding that the draft agreement on security covered all countries of the continent, including Ukraine. But the West, in his words, replied, "Ukraine is ours." Moreover, the United States turned down Russia’s initiative to prevent military physical threats to Russia on the ground, he added.
According to the Russian top diplomat, after the state coup in Ukraine, Moscow has been repeatedly appealing to the Western countries. "But over the past eight years, all our appeals, all our calls on the Western colleagues to talk sense into Ukraine’s authorities, they have been coming up against a dead wall of silence," Lavrov stressed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a televised address on February 24 that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation in order to protect people "who have been suffering from abuse and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years." The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories, its goals were denazification and demilitarization of that country.
Following this step, the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and several other countries announced sanctions against Russia individuals and legal entities.