Russia expects that once the goals of the Russian special operation in Ukraine are achieved, the West will stop "promoting a unipolar world" and violating the principles of the UN Charter, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday at a press conference following talks with Foreign Minister of Oman Badr bin Hamad bin Hamood Albusaidi.
"We hope and expect that the completion of our military operation upon achieving all its objectives will help stop the West's attempts to undermine international law, ignore and grossly violate the principles of the UN Charter, including the principle of the sovereign equality of states, and force the West to stop promoting the so-called unipolar world dominated by the United States and its allies," the Russian minister of foreign affairs said.
He noted that Moscow absolutely does not want war in Europe, while the West talks about the need to defeat Russia in the situation with Ukraine. "If you are concerned about the prospect of war in Europe - we do not want it at all, but I draw your attention to the fact that it is the West that constantly, persistently states that Russia must be defeated in this situation. Draw your own conclusions," Lavrov said.
"The goals that we set in Ukraine are very clear - not to allow violations of the rights of the Russian, Russian-speaking population in Donbass, which was under the threat of extermination by the Kiev regime, and <...> not to allow the West to create a bridgehead on Ukrainian territory that creates military threats to the Russian Federation," the Russian foreign minister added.
Answering the question about Russia's strategy in the fight against the unipolar world, the minister pointed out that it was necessary "to fulfill its obligations under the UN Charter, including the obligation to respect the principle of sovereign equality of states, to forget about its colonial habits, to discard neo-imperialistic sentiments."
As Lavrov noted, Russia is interested in ensuring that all civilians leave the zones of special operations in Ukraine. "We continue to open humanitarian corridors, people keep coming through them, we are interested that all civilians leave these zones [of Russian special operations]," he said. Lavrov noted that the Russian side had earlier advised UN Secretary-General António Guterres to demand that the Kiev authorities stop preventing civilians from leaving the areas of the military special operation. According to the minister, representatives of the UN secretariat are now "on the ground" and are trying to help resolve these issues.
UN secretariat missed an opportunity
"If we talk about the broader rather than purely humanitarian role that the UN could have played, to my great regret, the secretariat of this organization, including its Secretary-General [António Guterres], missed an opportunity to achieve a political settlement when for seven long years they did nothing to respond to the open, outright sabotage by the Kiev regime of Security Council Resolution 2202, which approved the Minsk agreements to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine," he stressed.
"If the leadership of the secretariat, after this resolution was unanimously approved by the Security Council in February 2015, had tried to encourage the Ukrainian authorities to implement the obligations arising from this document, I think we would not now have the problems that were eventually created by the Kiev regime with the connivance and open support of the United States and its allies," Lavrov summarized.
Russia has informed Oman in detail about developments around Ukraine and its "geopolitical refraction," the minister said. "We have informed our Omani interlocutors in detail on the development of the situation in Ukraine in the context of the special military operation conducted by the Russian Federation and the geopolitical refraction of this situation," he said.
"As for Oman's position on the Ukrainian crisis, we consider it balanced, balanced and based primarily on the national interests of its people," Lavrov stressed.
GSV "Russia - Islamic world"
Photo: Russian Foreign Ministry
Based on materials from TASS