MOSCOW, March 18. /TASS/. Denazification in Ukraine means not only cancelling the laws encouraging the Nazi ideology, it also means withdrawing any legislation that discriminates the national minority rights in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday.

"And of course, denazification is an absolute must. And it includes not only cancelling the laws encouraging Nazi ideology and practices, but it also includes withdrawing any legislation which discriminates the Russian language and other national minority languages and in general national minority rights in Ukraine, which have been hugely discriminated and offended," the foreign minister said in an interview with RT on Friday.

At talks between Russia and Ukraine in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, Belarus, on March 7, the status of the Russian language was among the issues discussed, member of the Russian delegation Leonid Slutsky told Rossiya-24 TV channel earlier. "We went to Belarus with concrete written proposals, systematized and detailed. <…>. There are also political aspects in them, issues of denazification and Russian language issues," said Slutsky, the chairman of the State Duma committee for international affairs.

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin in response to the appeal of the leaders of the republics of Donbass, decided to conduct a special military operation. The Russian leader stressed that Moscow's plans do not include the occupation of Ukrainian territories. The goal is the demilitarization and denazification of the country. The Russian Defense Ministry reassured that Russian troops are not targeting Ukrainian cities, but are limited to surgically striking and incapacitating Ukrainian military infrastructure.