Moscow:
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday that Ukraine’s proposed peace plan and the latest UN proposals to revive the Black Sea grain initiative were both “not realistic”.
Lavrov was speaking at a news conference after a week of intense global diplomacy at the annual meeting of world leaders at UN headquarters in New York, where Ukraine and its Western allies sought to drum up support for Kiev.
“It is absolutely not feasible,” Lavrov said of a 10-point peace blueprint promoted by Kiev.
“It is not possible to implement this. It is not realistic and everyone understands this, but at the same time they say that this is the only basis for negotiations.”
He said the conflict would be resolved on the battlefield if Kiev and its Western allies stuck to that position.
Lavrov added that Moscow abandoned the grain initiative in the Black Sea because promises made to Russia – including lifting sanctions on a Russian bank and reconnecting it to the global SWIFT system – had not been kept.
He said the latest UN proposals to revive the export corridor for Ukrainian agricultural products are “simply not realistic.”
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