TIANJIN /China/, July 15. /TASS/. Moscow would like to understand what US President Donald Trump meant by allocating 50 days to reach a settlement on Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, reiterating that the US leader had repeatedly set various deadlines.

"Certainly, we would like to understand what is behind this statement about 50 days. Earlier, there were also the deadlines of 24 hours and of 100 days, we’ve seen it all and really would like to understand the motivation of the US president," the top Russian diplomat told a news conference after the meeting of foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member countries in China’s Tianjin.

Lavrov noted enormous pressure on Trump. "It is clear that he is under enormous, I would say, shameless pressure by the European Union and NATO’s current leadership which recklessly supports Zelensky’s demands and continues to flood it with modern weapons, including offensive ones, at the expense of greater and greater damage to taxpayers in Western countries."

The Russian foreign minister emphasized that Russia "never builds its policy course to harm national interests or the country’s security." "And the special military operation is aimed precisely to eradicate those threats that were being created by the North Atlantic Alliance directly on our borders not for just one day or one year but for decades," he pointed out. Lavrov reiterated that Moscow had repeatedly voiced its concerns and Russian President Vladimir Putin "has dedicated countless speeches to this matter." "And, unfortunately, his voice was not heard," the top Russian diplomat stated.

In his opinion, this state of affairs merely confirms what the Russian head of state recently said in one of the interviews about the evolution of perception of relations with the West. "When at first it appeared that removing ideological differences is sufficient to make things right and then it turned out that ideology is not the issue but, rather, that the West, regardless of ideology of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, or post-Soviet Russia, has always been motivated by a single goal - geopolitically containing, suppressing or even directly eliminating Russia militarily, as history repeatedly demonstrated," Lavrov explained.

On July 14, Trump made a scheduled statement on the Ukrainian settlement. In the presence of NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, the US leader said that he was "disappointed" in Russia and its president as well as announced his decision to continue supplying weapons and military hardware to the Kiev regime if Europe foots the bill with NATO coordination.

Additionally, Trump said that the US will impose about 100% import tariffs on Russia and its trade partners if within 50 days Moscow and Washington do not reach an agreement on the Ukrainian settlement.