Post #28335

🎙Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's interview with the online project “Empatia Manuchi”(Manuchi's Empathy)(February 11, 2026) Read in full Key outtakes: • Russia's legitimate interest lies inensuring its own security. Like any normal country, we are interested in ensuring the continuity of our history and the development of our people in the most favourable external conditions – ones that enable economic growth, fulfilment of social objectives and a steady improvement in the well-being of our citizens. • Despite the constitutional guarantees of linguistic rights, over the past ten years approximately a dozen laws have been adopted in Ukraine – their passage began long before the special military operation – that effectively eradicate the Russian language from all spheres of public life. I have repeatedly cited this example in interviews and during negotiations: Ukraine is the only country where an entire language has been banned. In no other conflict do the parties prohibit each other’s languages. • There are very few sober voices in Europe calling for a serious approach to Ukrainian conflict resolution. Not in order to satisfy Zelensky, preserve his hold on power and allow him to continue his "performances" on the international stage, but in order for Europe to create a new security architecture and ensure peace – taking into account not only the legitimate interests of the Ukrainian people (which the Zelensky clique by no means represents), but also those of Russia. • When the West speaks of security guarantees today, it is not referring to guarantees that include Russia, but to guarantees directed against Russia. I repeat: the Kiev regime says it will not recognize anything de jure, yet claims it is willing to halt hostilities de facto– on the understanding that Europeans will provide ironclad security guarantees, ratified by their parliaments, and deploy troops. • There is plenty that can be criticized about the UN: its inflated staffing, for instance. Not to the scale of the EU or the European Commission, where matters have gone beyond reasonable bounds, but still significant. At the UN, at least certain limits of propriety are observed. • In the late Soviet period, despite our objections, permanent contracts were introduced at the UN. Previously, appointments had to be renewed every five years. Now they are indefinite. Once a person secures a permanent contract, they settle in New York – their children study there, roots are put down. This inevitably makes the UN and its Secretariat a highly politicized instrument. • The root cause of the Ukrainian crisis – created, financed and carried out by the West, which organized a coup d’état through the hands of Ukrainian neo-Nazis – was never seriously considered by the UN, not even remotely. When the then Ukrainian president Poroshenko declared that “our children will go to bright kindergartens and schools, while the children in Donbass will rot in basements”, when, for many years, Crimea was subjected to a water and energy blockade – they kept their silence. Today, they lament the suffering of Ukraine’s energy sector. Yet none of them lifted a finger when, following the coup, the Ukrainian putschists openly proclaimed that they would strangle Crimea – energetically, economically, in terms of food supplies and water deliveries.