MOSCOW, January 24. /TASS/. Russia cannot be satisfied with empty talk about a ceasefire in Ukraine, but at the same time it is ready to consider any serious proposals for a settlement, the Foreign Ministry said in answers to media questions received ahead of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s news conference on the results of Russian diplomacy in 2024.
"We cannot be satisfied with empty talk. So far, everything we have heard was confined to speculations about the need for some kind of truce," the Foreign Ministry said.
At the same time, it stressed, it is common knowledge that a pause is needed "to buy time to continue pumping weapons into Ukraine so that they have a chance to put themselves in order and carry out additional mobilization."
"We are ready to consider any serious and concrete proposals. We are always ready for consultations. If someone does not understand our repeatedly and extremely clearly stated position, we are always ready to confirm it. We are open to any negotiations, if they essentially address the root causes and the principles that [Russian President] Vladimir Putin explained in June 2024," the Foreign Ministry said.
The Foreign Ministry emphasized that all this was not some kind of precondition, but "a demand for fulfilling what everyone signed up to when adopting the UN Charter". The Foreign Ministry also recalled that Chinese President Xi Jinping in his initiative on global security in February 2023, dedicated to any conflict and the principles of their settlement, "emphasized in the text of that document the need for seeing and eliminating the root causes of any conflict in order to resolve it."
Other countries’ initiatives
The Russian Foreign Ministry drew attention to the fact that the initiatives of China, Brazil for resolving the Ukrainian crisis underscored the need for respecting the UN Charter. The principle of territorial integrity is also mentioned from time to time.
"We have been telling our Chinese and Brazilian friends and other countries that cooperate in promoting this well-intentioned initiative that the UN Charter is much more multifaceted than just the principle of territorial integrity. The principle of self-determination of peoples is no less important," the Foreign Ministry said. "If it were not for it, there would probably be problems with the decolonization of African and other peoples. It was this principle that became the international legal basis for decolonization. Also, it reflected the unwillingness of African peoples to live under the rule of colonizers."
Likewise, it is noted, "the population of Crimea, Donbass and Novorossiya does not want, cannot and will never live under the rule of the Nazis who seized power in Kiev."
"At this point the principle of self-determination of peoples comes into force. They have self-determined themselves. The Crimeans in 2014, and Donbass and Novorossiya in 2022. These realities are reflected in our Constitution," the Foreign Ministry recalled.