Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia insists that its peace treaty with Ukraine should include such conditions as that country’s demilitarization and denazification, according to his interview with the Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet, TASS reports.
The treaty should also provide that all lawsuits against Russia be dropped, sanctions lifted and Moscow’s seized assets returned, the minister said in the interview.
"On the agenda are the goals of Ukraine's demilitarization and denazification, the lifting of anti-Russian sanctions, the withdrawal of all lawsuits against Russia and the return of its assets that were illegally seized in the West. All these provisions should be spelled out in a legally binding peace settlement agreement," he said.
According to Lavrov, Russia has remained open to a diplomatic settlement of the Ukrainian conflict, but the talks should focus on a lasting peace, not a ceasefire.
"We do not need a pause that the Kiev regime and its external handlers would like to take to regroup troops, continue mobilization and strengthen military capabilities," he said.
The minister said a sustainable settlement would be impossible without eliminating the root causes of the conflict. According to the official, first of all, it is necessary to eliminate threats to Russia's security in connection with the expansion of NATO and Ukraine's involvement in that military bloc.
"It is no less important to make sure there is respect for human rights in the territories that remain under the control of the Kiev regime, which after 2014 has been exterminating everything associated with Russia, Russians and Russian-speaking people: the Russian language, culture, traditions, canonical Orthodoxy, Russian-language media," Lavrov said. "There is a need for international legal recognition of the new territorial realities that emerged with the incorporation of Crimea, Sevastopol, the DPR, LPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions into Russia. The people there have determined their fate through a free expression of their will in a referendum."
Lavrov said Ukraine should return "to the origins of its statehood and follow the spirit and letter of the documents that created its legal basis."
"As a reminder, the provision on the neutral, non-aligned and nuclear-free status of this country was enshrined in the 1990 declaration on its sovereignty. In August 1991, the legislature adopted the Act of Proclamation of Independence of Ukraine, which reaffirmed the inviolability of the provisions in that declaration. The preamble of current Constitution of Ukraine has references to the act of proclamation of independence," the minister said.
