MINSK, June 24. /TASS/. Moscow is not holding any "backdoor talks" with anyone about the settlement of the Ukrainian conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
"We are not holding any backdoor talks with anyone. The West is refusing to organize negotiations on a fair basis, not to mention that a man named Zelensky (Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky - TASS) banned the entire Ukrainian leadership from negotiating with the Russian Federation," he said at a news conference following talks with Belarusian Foreign Minister Sergey Aleinik.
Lavrov also mentioned that Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 14 laid out proposals that are "the result of a sober and constructive analysis of the current realities." But the West gave no substantive response, the minister said.
"Our goodwill is well known. We have it in abundance. Many times, starting from the coup in 2014, we have made a proposal to find a mutually acceptable solution to the situation that the West created in Ukraine after the coup. We have been met with constant rejection. It was the same negative attitude that was given to Putin’s recent initiative on realistic ways of a settlement," Lavrov said. "We perceive everything that is happening exclusively in the context of the situation when we are facing a Western ultimatum, and all the decisions that the president makes about our further steps are based on this."
"Almost everything that the West has done, what it has declared, what it has put into practice since the beginning of the special military operation is built along the lines of the ultimatum to the Russian Federation in all directions, including the prospects for a political and diplomatic settlement [around Ukraine], which were disrupted at the behest of the Anglo-Saxons in April 2022, and including the creeping expansion of the array of weapons, which the West allows itself to provide to the Nazi regime in Kiev," he went on to say.