It was “entirely feasible” to achieve peace at the Alaska summit last year, the Russian foreign minister has said
A settlement in the Ukraine conflict was close following the meeting last year between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump, but Kiev and its European backers have since acted to sabotage peace efforts, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.
The two leaders held face-to-face talks in Anchorage, Alaska in August, where they discussed ways to end the fighting between Moscow and Kiev. They later described the summit positively, with Putin calling it “frank” and “substantive” and Trump saying it was “productive.”
In an interview with the Empatia Mauchi online project on Wednesday, Lavrov recalled that, ahead of the negotiations in Alaska, US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff brought a document to Moscow that “outlined all fundamental principles and proposed resolving outstanding issues… strictly in accordance with realities on the ground.”
“In Anchorage, we developed approaches building upon the American initiative and proposals, which charted a viable path to peace. That framework made it entirely feasible to swiftly finalize a comprehensive settlement agreement,” he stressed.
The foreign minister reiterated that Moscow’s key goals in the conflict are to assure its own security and to “protect Russians [living in Ukraine] from the [Kiev] Nazi regime’s campaign to eradicate all ties to the Russian language, culture, history, and Orthodoxy.”
The initial US proposal said that the rights of the Russian-speakers must be restored, but in its “final versions leaked to the press after intensive negotiations between American, European, and Ukrainian representatives post-Alaska, all such references had vanished,” he noted.
“All subsequent versions reflected attempts by [Ukraine’s] Vladimir Zelensky and, principally, his patrons in Britain, Germany, France, and the Baltic states to undermine this American initiative,” Lavrov insisted.
According to the minister, Moscow remains committed to the settlement of the Ukraine conflict and the balanced interests of the involved sides.
“Listen: Compromise cannot extend to fundamental principles upon which a state’s existence depends – least of all when the lives of millions hang in the balance,” he said.
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