No more ‘goodwill gestures’ – Moscow

Moscow is no longer willing to make any concessions in order to mend the rift with Western powers, leaving the ball in their court, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday.

The top diplomat reiterated what President Vladimir Putin told US journalist Tucker Carlson in an interview last week. Putin said multiple unilateral gestures by Moscow had not been reciprocated by the West.

Lavrov was answering a question on whether Donald Trump’s possible return to the White House next year could result in improved relations.

“That is their problem. We have made so many concessions, gestures of goodwill… that our reserves have been exhausted,” he said at a conference titled ‘Euromaidan: Ukraine’s Lost Decade’. “The only gesture we’ve seen from them in response to our good deeds was made with one hand.”

The event marked the 10th anniversary of a Western-backed coup in Kiev, which set Ukraine on a collision course with Russia, Lavrov noted. As he was reminiscing on the events, the Russian official cited a number of examples of how Moscow’s willingness to compromise had been taken advantage of.

The 2014 events saw a EU-backed power-sharing agreement between Ukrainian opposition leaders and then President Viktor Yanukovich, which was ignored by violent street protests. Later on, the Minsk Agreements were signed in an attempt to end a conflict between Kiev and Donbass separatists which followed. Senior Ukrainian and European officials who negotiated the treaties have since described them as a ruse to give the country time to be armed by the West.

The US and its allies are now using deception in an attempt to trick neutral nations into siding with Ukraine, Lavrov claimed, referring to the ‘peace formula’ proposed by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.

Its core tenants are a demand for Russian capitulation, war reparations, and an international tribunal for the Russian leadership, but some ostensibly neutral points are also included, such as support for food and energy security, the minister explained. Neutral nations are urged to express support for the neutral articles, so that Kiev can claim their backing for the rest of its proposal, he said.

Lavrov called the plan a “baby pacifier,” the officials behind the scheme “swindlers” and “crooks,” and the entire situation a “disgrace” to Western diplomacy. He reiterated Putin’s call for the West to acknowledge that “it took a wrong, failed course” and find an off-ramp, which would allow it to save face.

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