Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov sharply criticized Washington’s position in the Ukraine crisis. The Russian diplomat calls on all countries, and in particular Turkey, to break with “the militarist state of mind”.
During a press conference organized on April 12 in Cairo in the company of the Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sameh Choukry, the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, was questioned by the Interfax agency on the renewed tensions observed in Ukraine recently.
The Russian diplomat recommended to all the countries involved in the matter, and in particular Turkey, “not to feed this militarist state of mind”. Referring to the concentration of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border, he said: “We hear questions like: ‘What is the Russian Federation doing on the border with Ukraine?’. The answer is very simple: we live there. ”
“What is the Russian Federation doing on the border with Ukraine?”. The answer is very simple: we live there, it is our country.
Sergey Lavrov went on to point out that this was not the case with the United States, which recently announced dispatch two warships to the Black Sea. “And as to what the United States is doing over there, its ships and its military who are constantly organizing NATO activities in Ukraine, thousands of kilometers from their own territory, that question remains, until ‘now, without an answer,’ he said.
On April 9, the Turkish Foreign Ministry announced that two warships were going to cross the Bosphorus towards the Black Sea in order to park there until May 4. A fortnight before their entry into the Bosporus, Ankara had been notified by the American administration of the arrival of these two warships since under the Montreux Convention, Turkey must be warned of the passage of ships. foreigners through the Bosphorus Strait.
Also asked about the recent trip of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Turkey on April 10, Sergei Lavrov called on countries likely to provide weapons to Ukraine to remember that after the “unconstitutional coup” carried out in 2014, the new authorities did not hesitate to attack their own people “by treating them as terrorists, while the inhabitants of Donbass did not attack anyone in the rest of ukraine”. The diplomat said he hoped “that this story has not been forgotten, especially by countries which are examining with Ukraine the possibility of deliveries of such and such military equipment.”
At the end of this April 10 meeting between Ankara and Kiev, the two parties indicated that they had decided to “intensify joint efforts to deepen cooperation” in many areas, including that of the clothing industry. defense. As RFI reports, in 2019, Turkey had already sold drones to Ukraine intended to equip the Ukrainian army.
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