MOSCOW, June 6. /TASS/. Ukraine refuses to conduct peace talks with Russia on instructions from the Western world, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told an online news conference on crucial issues on the international agenda on Monday.
"Ukraine does not wish to negotiate. It has refused. We have every reason to believe that by doing so it acted on instructions from the Anglo-Saxon leadership of the Western world," he said.
Lavrov recalled that Ukraine had made its most realistic proposals so far on March 29, when the delegations from the two countries met in Istanbul. "But then the Ukrainian side backtracked - on its own or on orders from Washington, London or Brussels," he stressed. He also added that now quite a few "fantasies" were being heard from Kiev regarding the need for returning to the situation that had existed before February 24.
Lavrov stressed that "Russia was ready to work honestly on the basis of the proposals made by the Ukrainian colleagues."
"The draft treaty based on those proposals has been idle on Ukraine’s table for almost six weeks now," Lavrov said.
Russia-Ukraine talks chronicle
Russian-Ukrainian negotiations have been underway since February 28. First, several meetings took place in Belarus. Then the negotiators continued discussions by video link. On March 29, a face-to-face round of negotiations was held in Istanbul. On April 12, Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters that Kiev had departed from the agreements reached in Turkey, thus steering this process to a dead end. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on April 20 that Moscow had handed over to Kiev a clearly-worded draft document on agreements and was waiting for a response. The leaders of Russia and Ukraine have not meet during the talks.