MOSCOW, July 1. /TASS/. Russia is not fighting for territories in the Ukrainian conflict but for the Russian people, its history, religion and language, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Portugal’s Radio and Television (RTP) media group.
"We are not fighting for territories but for the people, for our history, religion, the Russian language which is an official language of the entire UN system and which is now simply being obliterated and not just in Ukraine but also in other European countries, in the Baltics. Everybody is silent," he said.
According to the top Russian diplomat, the Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky "is acting on orders to exterminate any manifestations of the Russian civilization on the territory of the country where not him, but his predecessors, radicals and neo-Nazis like him, were allowed to stage a coup d’etat with a main goal being turning Ukraine into a tool containing and undermining the security of the Russian Federation, eliminating everything Russian on the lands that were cultivated by the Russians.".