Lavrov Accuses Kyiv of Disrupting Peace in Eastern Ukraine
MOSCOW – Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday accused Ukrainian authorities of disrupting the peace process and opting for a military solution to the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
“We see attempts to disrupt the peaceful process, Kyiv’s attempts to resolve the problem through the use of force, to suppress the south-east of Ukraine,” Lavrov said at a press conference with his Israeli counterpart, Avigdor Lieberman.
According to the TASS Russian news agency, Lavrov stressed that such attempts would only lead to new civilian victims and condemned Western countries for backing Kyiv in undertaking such attempts.
The Russian minister blamed the West for accusing pro-Russian militias of all the tragedies that occur in eastern Ukraine, referring to last week’s bombing of the city of Mariupol, which left 30 civilians dead and 100 others injured.
Earlier, Ukraine, the United States and other Western countries expressed support for tightening sanctions against Russia but Lavrov has said he hopes new and stronger sanctions on Moscow will not be forthcoming.
Dmitri Peskov, press secretary to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said on Monday that the threat of new sanctions against Russia will never force the country to change its stance on the situation in Ukraine, according to the Interfax news agency.