Post #7318

🎙Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov's interview with NBC(Moscow, August 24, 2025) Key talking points: • President VladimirPutin was invited by President DonaldTrump. He visited Alaska. They had a very substantive meeting in Anchorage. <...> They discussed real things regarding security. The violation of Russian security interests was one of the root causes of what has happened. • President Putin has regard for President Trump, respecting President Trump's concentration on the interest, national interest of the United States, national interest and well-being, and historic heritage of the American people. And I don't have any doubt that President Trump respects the same attitude of President Putin to protecting the national interests of Russia. • President Trump suggested, after Anchorage, several points which we share, and on some of them we agreed to show some flexibility. When President Trump brought those issues to the meeting in Washington, with Zelensky present together with his European sponsors, he clearly indicated, it was very clear to everybody that there are several principles which Washington believes must be accepted, including no NATO membership, including the discussion of territorial issues, and Zelensky said no to everything. • President Putin <...> is ready to meet with President Zelensky, provided this meeting is really going to decide something. • When we come to a stage where you have to sign documents, we would need a very clear understanding by everybody that the person who is signing is legitimate. And according to the Ukrainian constitution, Mr. Zelensky is not, at the moment. • Last time our delegations met in Istanbul, we suggested to create three working groups, including on political matters. More than one month passed already, there is no response from the Ukrainian side. • Indivisible security is something which was enshrined in many documents adopted by consensus at summits of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, in particular in Istanbul in 1999, and in Astana in 2010. This principle goes like: no one can strengthen their security at the expense of the security of others. No organization in the European space can pretend to dominate in military and political matters. And NATO has been doing exactly the opposite. • Those discussions which took place after the Washington meeting, [Western countries] clearly indicate that people see security as only security for Ukraine and they are prepared to send an intervention force, an occupying force, to the Ukrainian territory to deter Russia. And this is not the way to handle the situation. <...> But security guarantees must be subject to consensus. • Everything which is going on now has reasons in the decades and decades, of years when the West was building NATO, was moving NATO directly on Russian borders, and was building Ukraine as an instrument to defeat Russia in the battlefield, as it were. • We don't have any interest in territories. We have the biggest territory on Earth. What we are concerned about, unlike those who raise the issue of invasion, taking more and more land, we are concerned about the people who live on those lands. • Never, ever Russia deliberately targeted any sites which are not linked to military abilities of Ukraine. <...> We are dropping bombs on the targets which aredirectly involved in building Ukrainian military machines targeting the Russian civilians and continuing the war which Ukrainians started by instigation from the Biden administration, from the Europeans. • We have the goals which will be achieved. The goals are: to remove any security threats to Russia coming from the Ukrainian territory, to protect the rights of the ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking people who believe they belong to the Russian culture and Russian history. And the only way to protect them against this nazist regime is to give them the right to express their will. Read in full