MOSCOW, September 11. /TASS/. When former US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland disclosed the role that Washington played in Kiev's rejection of the Istanbul agreements in March 2022, she provided proof the US lacked any interest in a diplomatic settlement, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

"The West has never been interested in a political and diplomatic settlement of the Ukrainian crisis," Zakharova said at a news conference. "This revelation has now <...> come out of the mouth of a US official."

"There remains no doubt that it was the United States that appointed former UK Prime Minister [Boris] Johnson as the driving force behind the disruption of the Istanbul agreements," Zakharova continued. "There was indeed a criminal conspiracy between the United States and Britain there."

The events surrounding the Istanbul agreements show, according to the diplomat, that Washington and London are "not just Anglo-Saxons as a figure of speech, but a tie-up between two nations that take advantage of a third nation, after they demolished its statehood, for their own purposes and reducing <...> it to a level of an armed terrorist gang."

"All decisions of the Kiev regime are dictated and developed by Washington," Zakharova went on to say.