Сергей Лавров. Фото: МИД РФ
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov responded to comments by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio regarding talks between the U.S. and Russian presidents in Anchorage.
According to Lavrov, the proposals put forward by the United States in Alaska were discussed and accepted by the Russian side, TASS reported. He therefore said it was “not very elegant” for Rubio to claim that no agreement had been reached in Anchorage.
“When my colleague Marco Rubio says that in Alaska there were only proposals and no agreement, it raises a question for me about what we mean by an agreement. If one side, in this case the United States, put forward its proposals on a settlement and on how to approach this crisis, and the other side expressed its agreement with those proposals, then saying that there was no agreement somehow seems not very elegant.
Of course, the whole situation needs to be clarified. But the fact remains that in Alaska the U.S. proposals were discussed and accepted by the Russian side.
When we now hear interest in the United States playing a constructive role and bringing the sides together, that already sounds like a bid for mediation,” he said.
On Thursday, Rubio said that no agreement had been reached in Anchorage and that only U.S. proposals had been discussed.
” There was no agreement in Alaska. There was a proposal in Alaska, but there was no agreement in Alaska. If there had been an agreement, we would have had an end to the war. So as I said, the President is prepared, as the United States remains prepared, to play whatever constructive role we can to bring about an enduring end to this war in Ukraine,” the secretary of state said.
“I mean, Russia wants the entirety of Donetsk to be turned over to them, among some other things that they raised, but there was never an agreement. Had there been an agreement, there would have been an end to the war, and that’s been the fundamental problem,” he added.