Trump’s win won’t change US stance on Ukraine – Lavrov
The power shift in the US following Donald Trump’s election victory is unlikely to change Washington’s stance on the Ukraine conflict, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Commenting on the potential impact of the US presidential election on the Ukraine conflict in an interview broadcast on Russia 1 on Wednesday, Lavrov suggested that Washington will always seek to control everything that is happening in the areas bordering NATO territory, no matter who the president is.
“I have no doubt that they will want to keep these processes under their control… Washington’s attitude towards Ukrainian affairs and European affairs will not change in principle, in the sense that Washington will always strive to keep under its watchful eye everything that happens in the areas near NATO and the NATO area itself,” Lavrov said. This comes after recent statements from Trump, who has promised to end the Ukraine conflict as soon as he returns to the White House.
Lavrov also commented on recent reports regarding proposals to freeze the Ukraine conflict. According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump’s foreign policy advisers have put forth a number of suggestions to resolve the conflict, including: freezing the front line, accepting Russia’s claims to former Ukrainian territories, and forcing Ukraine to temporarily suspend plans to join NATO. According to Lavrov, this plan is far from perfect.
“Some [Western politicians] have started to look more soberly at the Ukrainian situation and say, ‘what’s lost is lost, let’s somehow freeze this entire thing.’ Yet… they still suggest having a truce along the contact line for ten years. These would be the same Minsk accords in a new wrapping, or even worse,” Lavrov stated. He was referring to the now-defunct Minsk agreements brokered by Russia, France, and the UK in 2014-15, which were supposed to deescalate the conflict between Kiev and the then-Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, and pave the way for administrative and political reform in Ukraine. The accords, however, were instead used to buy time for Kiev to build up its military.
“The Minsk accords were final. They were about a small part of Donbass, to be honest. But everything collapsed because [the Kiev regime] categorically did not want to grant this part of Donbass – which would have remained part of Ukraine – special status, primarily in the form of the right to speak their native language,” Lavrov said.
He added that the “deliberate extermination of everything Russian” in Donbass was one of the root causes of the conflict between Kiev and Moscow, and that any proposals aimed at ending it would have to include language rights for the ethnic Russian population of Ukraine.
