🎙 Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s answers to questions at the 22nd Doha Forum session (07 December 2024)

Key points:

#Syria #terrorism

• It’s inadmissible to allow the terrorist groups to take control of the lands in violation of agreements which exist starting with the UN Security Council Resolution 2254 which strongly reiterated the sovereignty, territorial integrity and unity of the Syrian Arab Republic, which condemned any attempts by terrorists to disturb the life of Syrians, and which called for the direct dialogue between the government and the opposition.

• We are absolutely convinced of inadmissibility to use terrorists like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to achieve geopolitical purposes, as it is being done now with the organization of this offensive from the Idlib de-escalation area.

• We are trying to do everything not to allow terrorists to prevail, even if they say that they are no longer terrorists.

#AstanaFormat

• We [Foreign Ministers of Russia, Iran and Türkiye] strongly reiterated territorial integrity, sovereignty and unity of the Syrian Arab Republic. We called for immediate end of hostile activities. We stated, all of us, that we want the Resolution 2254 to be fully implemented and for this purpose called for the dialogue between the government and legitimate opposition, as provided in that Resolution.

• I have no slightest doubt that the relations between Syria and Türkiye must be normalized and we will be doing anything to be helpful.

#Palestine

• We strongly condemned the terrorist attack on the 7th of October last year. But at the same time, we strongly condemned the way Israel reacted, basically by starting a collective punishment of the Palestinians.

• Unless Palestinian state is created (which was, by the way, a precondition for the creation of Israeli state), extremism would be breeding and breeding and breeding in the region, there is no doubt.

#Ukraine

❗️ Many initiatives have been put forward <...> But none of them mentions what President Xi Jinping of China proclaimed in his global security initiative, which he made public, I think, in February 2023. Not about Ukraine. It's a generic initiative on the principles which you must apply when you address any conflict. And one of the principles says - address and eliminate root causes of a conflict. This is key to any situation, be it lack of Palestinian state and what is going on in the Middle East, or be it Ukraine. The root causes of the Ukrainian crisis are not mentioned in any initiative.

#USA

• Everything they [the Biden Administration] do indicates that they persuade Europeans not to believe in Russian red lines. They push them farther and farther, providing an example like ATACMS to make the French and the British with their Scalp and Storm Shadow missiles more aggressively involved. They also pressure the Germans with Taurus, as far as I understand.

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