MINSK, October 31. /TASS/. The scenario of ending the conflict in Ukraine in a draw is unlikely to reliably ensure the interests of all sides, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
"The draw, it seems to me, slightly fails to convey the need to reliably ensure the interests of each side, including on a continental scale. And the reasons for this are well known to us - Alexander Grigoryevich [Lukashenko] today mentioned the measures taken by the Kiev regime after the coup d’etat to eradicate the Russian language in all spheres of life," the minister said at a press conference following the 2nd Minsk International Conference on Eurasian Security.
Earlier, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that the West has realized that it is necessary to try to negotiate a "draw" in the Ukrainian conflict.
Lavrov recalled that Kiev had banned the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. "None of the countries that have put forward some initiatives on the Ukrainian crisis mention it at all," he pointed out. "And this is the most important problem of the numerous ideas that are now spreading in connection with the search for a way to resolve the Ukrainian crisis," the top diplomat said.
The foreign minister recalled that in any conflict it is necessary to focus on the elimination of its root causes. According to him, the same idea is reflected in the Chinese initiative put forward in early 2023. "Here, the extermination of everything Russian, Russian culture in the broadest sense of the word, the extermination of the canonical Orthodox religion in flagrant violation of the UN Charter, along with the dragging of Ukraine into NATO are the root causes of what we are now witnessing in Ukraine, when Russia has no other choice but to protect its compatriots, by and large brothers and sisters," Lavrov explained.