UNITED NATIONS, December 14. /TASS/. Russia would welcome an opportunity to resolve the conflict in Ukraine peacefully, at the negotiating table, but has to continue its special military operation, Russian First Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Dmitry Polyansky said on Tuesday.
"Now we know, thanks to [former German chancellor Angela] Merkel, who was one of the guarantors of the Minsk agreements, we now know for sure that the West was just winning time, trying to arm Ukraine and preparing for this kind of situation," the Russian diplomat told US blogger Tara Reade in an interview. "We would like to have the goals of this military operation achieved through peaceful means and it was possible."
"We were proposing to western countries on the eve of this operation to get around the table and to discuss security guarantees for Russia and to discuss things about Ukraine, how Ukraine needs to implement the Minsk agreements. And it was very easy," the diplomat continued. "Several very easy conditions. First of all stop shelling its citizens, to acknowledge the fact that they have human rights, they have the right to speak their own language, to worship their heroes, not the people who were collaborating with Hitler."
"Basic rules, something that is absolutely normal for anybody else. <…> If we could achieve it through other means, through negotiating table, some kind of guarantees, we would with pleasure do it, but what we got from the West this moment was very condescending treatment and kind of dismissal of any our preoccupations. And then as you know the shelling of Donbas intensified very significantly," he said.
Polyansky reiterated that Russian President Vladimir Putin "stated it repeatedly that we would be pleased to end it peacefully, at negotiating table."
"But of course it is possible only through looking into deep roots of this problem and eradicating them. For Ukraine - not representing in the future any danger to Russia. Now what we see is quite opposite. <…> So the country is absolutely going in the wrong direction," he added.
"So I’m afraid that the only thing that we have - we have to continue our military operation and we have to fight not only with Ukraine, but with NATO weapons," Russia’s first deputy UN envoy said.