Moscow [Russia], August 24 : Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has accused Western countries of deliberately attempting to obstruct the peace negotiation process with Ukraine, warning that such efforts will ultimately fail, the state news agency TASS reported on Sunday.
According to TASS, in an interview with the state-owned broadcaster VGTRK's journalist Pavel Zarubin, the Russian Foreign Minister emphasised that attempts to derail the diplomatic process, originally initiated by Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump during the Alaska summit, would be "thwarted".
Lavrov noted that Putin had described the summit as "fruitful" and emphasised the need to "turn the page" and resume cooperation between the two countries.
"They (Western countries) are simply looking for a pretext to prevent negotiations, and they want this to happen through no fault of theirs, no fault of [Vladimir] Zelensky, who is also being stubborn, putting forward some conditions, demanding an immediate meeting with Putin, no matter what. [This is] an attempt to disrupt the process basically laid down by presidents Putin and Trump, which was quite fruitful, and we hope that those attempts will be thwarted," Lavrov said to Zarubin, as quoted by TASS.
After the summit in Alaska on August 15, follow-up meetings on Ukraine were held in Washington on August 19, where discussions centred on the summit's outcomes, Trump's engagements with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders, and potential post-war security guarantees for Ukraine.
Lavrov, during the interview, also criticised Zelensky for attempting to "shift the focus" away from internal issues, particularly the treatment of the Russian language and the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, TASS reported.
He argued that the real issue is the series of Ukrainian laws that have, in his view, banned the Russian language and suppressed the canonical Church, moves he called "gross violations of the UN Charter".
Lavrov asserted that the first necessary step toward resolving the conflict should be the repeal of these laws, regardless of Zelensky's position.
"He said that Russian will not be the state language. However, generally speaking, no one is particularly insisting on this. The first step, which does not depend on any wishes of Zelensky or anyone else, is the repeal of all laws that banned the Russian language and the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church in gross violation of the UN Charter. This is why he is trying to shift the focus of the problem, which he will fail to do," Lavrov stated, as quoted by TASS.
According to TASS, Zelensky recently stated that granting Russian the status of a state language was not on the table in any settlement with Moscow.