🎙 Excerpt from an interview with FM Sergey Lavrov for the Evening with Vladimir Solovyov programme on Rossiya 1 TV channel (March 14, 2024)

Key points:

💬Russia's President Vladimir Putin's Munich Speech included his analysis of the developments in relations between Moscow and the West, and the policy that the Westerners had initially opted for with regard to the new Russia. Some people [on the West] took it seriously. They were a minority. The majority ignored it, shrugged it off, or was outraged.

• After August 2008 [events] and before the Crimean Spring, our relations with the West had become increasingly open and, therefore, tense. Neither the EU, nor NATO wasn't willing to draw conclusions.

• In early 2022 the Ukrainian authorities got the green light to carry out an operation to mop up Donbass. Since the beginning of February 2022, the bombing attacks have intensified 10- to 12-fold.

• Even when there were still false hopes that the Minsk agreements would be implemented, when the Kiev regime was violating them by shelling Donbass, about 2 mln people left there for Russia. And even more did so after the special military operation was launched.

• It is impossible to fake, teach or learn using Stanislavsky’s system, the joy displayed by the people welcoming our soldiers. They have finally seen us come.

• The Russian MFA has representative offices in Lugansk and Donetsk. They will be established in the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions later. I want to go there and talk to the staff at our offices, to see what they need.

• What is happening now with the West is a frenzy. The worse the situation at the front, the more furious the West is talking – we don’t have the right to allow Ukraine to lose and Russia to win.

• We are saying that if you are ready to conduct honest talks taking into account our real concerns, Russia’s lawful interests about which we talked to you for many years but you won’t listen. If you return to what we had called for, let’s talk. But so far we don’t see any evidence

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