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No more ‘shuttle diplomacy’: Russia rebuffs West as mediator at Ukraine negotiations

Russia’s top diplomat went to say that "the EU fully proved its incompetence, when it failed to make good on what it had agreed on"

MOSCOW, March 28./TASS/. Russia doesn’t want any of the West’s ‘shuttle diplomacy’ at talks with Ukraine, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Serbian media on Monday.

"I would not want to see any shuttle diplomacy from our Western colleagues, since they already did their shuttle job in February 2014 in Ukraine and in February 2015 in Minsk," Lavrov maintained.

"Now, they are telling us: ‘give diplomacy a chance’. Of course, we want to give diplomacy a chance, that's why we have agreed to restart the talks now in Istanbul. However, there is a host of examples of how diplomatic achievements were ruined by our Western colleagues. We can no longer trust them," the top diplomat stressed.

He reiterated that back in February 2014, the European Union acted as a guarantor of an agreement between the then Ukrainian president and the opposition, which was the culmination of diplomacy. "The next morning, the opposition spat on this diplomacy, and the EU had to swallow it. Later on, this diplomacy reached new heights, for instance, in Minsk in February 2015. Agreements were signed to put an end to the war in the east of Ukraine, opening up a path towards the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity by granting a special status to Donbass," Lavrov continued.

Russia’s top diplomat went to say that "the EU fully proved its incompetence, when it failed to make good on what it had agreed on."

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