Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, has said that Washington has been put under “unbelievable” pressure by the European War Hawks and Kyiv, who have no interest in addressing the concerns associated with the conflict in Ukraine.
He accused the West and Kyiv of derailing the peace talks between Moscow and Washington. His comments came during an interview that aired on Sunday evening.
He said that Moscow was not seeking to influence or “interfere in the internal considerations of the US leadership”, which has been facing mounting pressure from Kyiv’s primary backers in the West.
“We don’t aim to create any sort of discomfort for the United States, which is under immense pressure from the European ‘hawks’ and from Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who don’t want to see two nations cooperating,” he said.
“There are enough people who are not very polite and who impose themselves upon Washington politicians and use every means to undermine the process, which could have achieved its goals some time ago," Lavrov cautioned.
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He warned the EU that any mobilisation attempt made to prolong the conflict in Ukraine will invite a decisive and punitive response from Moscow. This comes hours after Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk claimed that Ukraine was seeking to continue its war with Russia for three more years.
Tusk quoted Zelenskyy as saying that “he hopes that the war will not last ten years, but that Ukraine is ready to fight for another two or three years.”
Should the conflict with Russia drag on longer, Zelenskyy is “anxious about the toll the war would take on its population and economy,” he said. Moscow has consistently signalled that it has been seeking a lasting solution to the hostilities, rather than a temporary ceasefire.
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