Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lawrow has addressed the public with an “update” on the current situation surrounding peace negotiations with Ukraine and also stated that around 1.02 million people have been brought “to safety” from Ukraine to Russia since the beginning of the war. According to him, 120,000 of them come from the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk alone – in other words, the east of Ukraine, whose secession is one of the Kremlin’s main interests in its “special operation”.
Lavrov also stated that he was in “daily” exchanges with Kyiv regarding the negotiations on a possible ceasefire. According to him, lifting the sanctions imposed on Russia is the most difficult part of the Moscow-Kyiv peace talks. “Currently, the Russian and Ukrainian delegations are discussing the draft of a possible agreement via video conference every day,” Lavrov said in a comment to China’s Xinhua News Agency, published on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website.
“The agenda of the talks includes denazification, recognition of the new geopolitical realities, lifting of sanctions and the status of the Russian language,” Lavrov said. Russia is in favor of continuing the negotiations, even if they are difficult. Kyiv had recently warned that the talks were in danger of failing.
Lavrov also accused NATO of using political agreements and arms deliveries to prevent the end of what the official Russian side called the “special operation”. He further claimed that the Russian military is doing “everything in its power to avoid civilian casualties”. Ukraine, on the other hand, reports civilian casualties every day, with almost 1,200 civilian bodies reported to have been discovered in the Kyiv region alone. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights recently put the number of civilians killed in Ukraine at 2,899. However, the Bureau believes the actual numbers are significantly higher.
