Lavrov Interview with India Today TV: The Regime Will Be Changed By the Ukrainian People, Not Russia

On the 19th, Lavrov engaged in a long interview that reviews yet again the history of the Ukrainian crisis. The interviewer I found unusually confrontational given India is a strategic partner of Russia. This is a machine translation and has numerous errors primarily of pronouns, but also a few temporal errors by Lavrov, and aside from them, I found no factual errors by Lavrov. The discussion on democracy is very relevant. IMO, Russia is trying to arrive at an outcome that will give Ukrainians the Four Freedoms--Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear. Lavrov also makes it very clear that Russia was forced to declare the Special Military Operation to fulfill its Responsibility to Protect--R2P--as authorized by the UN Charter--a fact the Collective West doesn't want the world to know. I refrained from adding emphasis nor did I do any correcting/editing, and I'm leaving the font normal. For those who would rather watch, the video is at the above hyperlink. Yes, it's long, but the overall saga is just that--multigenerational.

Question: Many people today are asking the question: what is the reason for this special military operation? Why did President Vladimir Putin start it at the very moment when, as we have seen, the talks were taking place? What is the main reason? We heard America say that Russia was going to carry out this operation. India, like many other countries, did not suspect and did not think, but it happened.

Sergey Lavrov: The real reason is the complacency of many countries after the end of World War II, when our Western colleagues under the leadership of the United States called themselves winners and, in violation of their promises to the Soviet and Russian leadership, began to push NATO to the east. They kept telling us not to worry – this is a defence alliance, not a threat to Russian security. But the alliance was defensive when NATO and the Warsaw Pact existed. As you may recall, there was the Berlin Wall (both physical and geopolitical). It was quite obvious where the "line of defense" of this "defense alliance" lay.

When the "enemy" disappeared, the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union collapsed, they decided that they would move this "line of defense" to the east. They did it five times without explaining who they were going to "defend" against. Meanwhile, in the process, they accumulated advanced strike capabilities and used the former Soviet republics, in particular Ukraine, as a springboard directed against Russian interests.

Back in 2003, when the next presidential elections were held in Ukraine, the West quite brazenly demanded that Ukrainians decide who they were with: with Europe or with Russia. Then they began to push Ukraine to the Association Agreement with the European Union. It provided for zero tariffs on exports and imports between the EU and Ukraine. At that time, we had agreements on a free trade zone with all CIS countries, including Ukraine. We told our Ukrainian friends that we have zero tariffs on exports with them, but there is protection from the European Union, because by that time we had already been negotiating wto accession for 18 years. We were forced to take protective measures and introduce protective duties for some sectors of the Russian economy: agriculture, insurance, banking, etc. We said then that if Ukraine has zero tariffs for the EU and we and Kiev too, then we will not be protected from duty-free import of European goods.

In 2013, the Ukrainian president understood this problem and asked the EU to postpone the signing of the Association Agreement. We proposed that the three of us – the EU, Ukraine and Russia – sit down and discuss how to move forward. The European Union then very arrogantly said that this was none of our business. They say that they do not "stick their nose" into Russia's trade with China and other countries, and everything will be as they want. The President of Ukraine decided to postpone the signing of the Agreement, and the next morning demonstrations began on the Maidan in Kiev, resulting in bloodshed.

In February 2014, the European Union helped broker a deal between the Ukrainian president and the opposition. The next morning, the signatories, namely representatives of the EU (Poland, France and Germany), were ignored by the opposition, which committed a coup d'état. They announced that they were creating a "government of victors", would abolish the special status of the Russian language, threatened to expel ethnic Russians from Crimea, and sent armed groups to storm the Supreme Soviet of Crimea. That's how the war started. Crimeans said they wanted nothing to do with such a Ukrainian government. As I said, they were under threat of violence from armed groups. In the east of Ukraine, too, people said that they did not support the coup d'état, asked to leave them alone. They have never attacked other regions of Ukraine. The putschists attacked them, calling them terrorists. The Ukrainian government called these people terrorists for eight long years.

We were able to stop this bloodshed. In February 2015, the Minsk agreements were signed, which provided for the assignment of a special status to the regions of eastern Ukraine: language, the right to have local police, special economic relations with adjacent Russian regions. In general, the same thing that the EU agreed on with Northern Kosovo and Serbia. In both cases, the European Union has failed to meet the obligations guaranteed by the signatures of EU members. For eight long years, the governments and presidents of Ukraine have repeatedly said that they are not going to fulfill the Minsk agreements, that they will move to plan "B". They continued to shell the territories of the self-proclaimed republics. We wanted the Europeans, the United States and Ukraine to admit that they were ignoring the document that was approved by the UN Security Council.

People don't want to turn their gaze back into history because they don't want to take into account events that don't paint them. But these specific events are connected with the actions of the United States and the "collective West", with their desire to dominate the whole world and demonstrate to everyone that there will be no multipolarity, but a unipolar world.

They can operate anywhere: in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yugoslavia. These countries are tens of thousands of kilometers away from the United States. When there are "threats" to their safety, they can do whatever they want. For example, to raze cities to the ground, as they did in Mosul (Iraq), in Raqqa (Syria). Russia warned its colleagues that right on our borders they are creating a bridgehead against us, pumping Ukraine with weapons, ignoring the legislation of this country, which completely banned the Russian language, incited the practice of neo-Nazi ideology. Nationalist battalions were formed, which were active against their own territory, which proclaimed independence, which was promised a special status inside Ukraine.

All this is due to the fact that Ukraine has become a springboard for NATO, for its expansion. They said that Ukraine would become part of NATO, no one could stop Ukraine if it had such a desire. Then President Zelensky said that he was thinking of possessing nuclear weapons. In November 2021, President Vladimir Putin invited the United States and NATO to sit down at the negotiating table, cool down a bit and discuss what we can do with legal security guarantees without further expansion of the alliance to the east. They refused. At this time, the Ukrainian army significantly intensified shelling of the republics in violation of all ceasefire regimes. We had no choice but to recognize them, to sign a mutual assistance treaty. And in response to their request to send our military units as part of a special military operation to protect their lives.

Question: You have presented arguments, both historical and contemporary. President Vladimir Putin said that you are fighting not with the citizens of Ukraine, but with the Ukrainian regime. We know that in international politics the expression "not in my house, not at my doorstep" is often used. America often says this, as do other countries. Should an entire people be punished for wanting an independent foreign policy?

Sergey Lavrov: I don't think this is due to any kind of "independence". Since 2013 (or maybe even earlier), hundreds of British, European and American military advisers have been openly present in the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, in the SBU, literally directing everything.

As for civilians, immediately after the start of the military operation, in response to the request of Donetsk and Lugansk, in full compliance with Article 51 of the UN Charter, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that the only goals of the operation were the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine. These are two closely interrelated problems of this country. We are focused only on military infrastructure. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian army and "national battalions" using neo-Nazi patches, the swastika (the symbol is of ancient Indian origin, but was distorted and used by the Waffen-SS), continue to hide behind civilians as human shields. They have heavy weapons in the centers of cities, near hospitals, kindergartens, schools. There is plenty of evidence on the Internet of people who have lived in these places. They asked the army not to do so.

Unfortunately, no one in the West pays attention to the facts we provide. Instead, they fabricate such dramatizations as it was a few weeks ago in the village of Bucha, from where Russian troops left on March 30 this year. The mayor of Buchi, A.P. Fedoruk, publicly said that they had returned to normal life. Only on the fourth day did they begin to show photos of dozens of corpses lying on the street. The same streets were shown a few days before – everything was fine there. A couple of weeks later, in the city of Kramatorsk, which was under the control of the Ukrainian side, people were asked to come to the railway station and struck there with a Tochka-U missile. It was unequivocally proved that this missile was fired by the Ukrainian army. That is why the next day in the West this video was no longer shown. The nature of this provocation was clear to everyone. The New York Times now say they have evidence that the Ukrainian army used cluster munitions.

Speaking in general about the civilian population and international humanitarian law, its norms, I can assure you that our army acts against military infrastructure, and not against civilians.

Question: You said that Russian forces strike only at military infrastructure or even the one located in civilian regions. However, the Russian military was not "ceremonial" in taking the cities. There were casualties and bloodshed among the civilian population, whether it was a suburb of Kiev, Mariupol, Volnovakha, which were completely wiped off the face of the earth. Is there any responsibility on the Russians for the bloodshed?

Sergey Lavrov: It is always terrible when military actions bring destruction to civilians and civilian infrastructure, residential areas. Ethnic Russians, citizens of Ukraine in the east of the country, were killed for eight years. No TV channels from Africa, Asia, Europe, the United States paid attention to this. At the same time, Russian journalists worked on the demarcation line on the part of the proclaimed republics, demonstrating around the clock the atrocities committed by the armed forces of Ukraine and national battalions. Throughout all these years, not a single foreign journalist has bothered to come and work on the contact line from the other side to see what is really happening there.

OSCE statistics show that the damage done to civilians and the infrastructure of the self-proclaimed republics was five times higher than the damage on the side controlled by the Ukrainian government. Not to mention the fact that it is possible to ignore the damage or civilian casualties inflicted on civilian infrastructure.

I want to emphasize that all the "screams" began to be heard only when the Russians decided to protect ethnic Russians who were citizens of Ukraine and faced discrimination. There were no "screams" when Raqqa, Syria, was razed to the ground, and hundreds of corpses lay uncleaned for weeks. Americans have never had remorse in achieving their military goals, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria.

It's always a tragedy when people die. However, it is impossible to tolerate a situation where our Western colleagues claim that they can do whatever they want. We cannot but prevent them from banning the Russian language in education, in the media, closing all Russian-speaking channels, including Ukrainian ones, persecuting the opposition (which supports dialogue with Russia), refusing to grant special status to regions of Ukraine where a large number of Russian-speaking people live.

Question: Returning to the issue of war crimes, genocide, as well as the use of chemical weapons by Russian troops. Let's talk about video evidence. You say there were no bodies. What about the bodies that were later found in the basements? Tell me, will there be any investigation? Why do you claim that this did not happen?

Sergey Lavrov: We are investigating the atrocities committed by neo-Nazi battalions and the Armed Forces of Ukraine. A special commission was created by a Russian public organization. She, in particular, investigated fakes orchestrated by the White Helmets in Syria and elsewhere. We will seek the truth no matter what.

We know that the United States, Great Britain and other Western countries have an interesting habit: they "throw" stories into the information field when they believe that they will ideologically "play" in their favor. Then, when facts emerge that cast doubt on these news stories, they simply lose interest in them.

For example, 2007, London, poisoning of A. Litvinenko. A colossal explosion of indignation, an investigation begins. A few weeks pass, and it is made "public". This is arbitrary, because in the UK it means that everything is classified. Now we cannot get facts about what really happened to Alexander Litvinenko.

In 2014, a Malaysian Boeing MH17 was shot down over Ukraine. We wanted to be part of the investigation. However, this did not happen. But Ukraine, which did not close the sky over its territory during the conflict, was invited to the investigation team. We don't. Malaysia, the owner of the plane, was called five months later, after the Australians, Dutch and Malaysians agreed among themselves that whatever was accepted by the group should be adopted by consensus. This means that Ukraine, which did not close its airspace over its territory, had the right to veto this investigation. So here too, it was not possible to achieve the truth.

In 2019, there was a "poisoning" of the Skripals in Salisbury. People just disappeared. The only proof that has been made public is in T. May's words about "highly likely". London insisted on the expulsion of Russian diplomats by most European countries. I asked my colleagues if the British had provided any evidence other than the words "highly likely"? I was told, "They promised." I checked a year later, it turned out that no evidence was provided.

Take 2020 our opposition blogger A. Navalny was "poisoned". They immediately responded to Germany's request to allow him to go to a Berlin hospital. He was transported to Berlin 24 hours later, and after that we received no explanation as to who was flying with him, where they got the bottle, which was a key element in this investigation. When asked by the Germans if they could show the formula of the detected substance in his blood, we were told that it was a "military secret." Now we insist on the truth about A. Litvinenko, the Malaysian Boeing, Salisbury, A. Navalny.

Staged stories in Ukraine these days are of the same nature.

Question: You are talking about the atrocities of the national battalions. It's monstrous. There has to be an investigation. If they are neo-Nazis, then in no case should they have been included in the armed forces of any country. That's exactly right.

But if you look at your own military. We see only the denial of claims. Will there be an investigation against your armed forces if they have committed a crime? Will they be held accountable?

Sergey Lavrov: We have legislation according to which the military cannot take any action that is prohibited by international humanitarian law. Violations are recorded and investigated.

According to Azov. Curiously, you noted this. "Azov" in the United States in 2015 was included in the list of groups not subject to support. Congress was forbidden to provide any support to this battalion. Since then, everyone has forgotten about it. In fact, Americans, of course, remember everything. And now they decided to support them with money. In Japan, the government adopted a special decree according to which Azov is no longer considered a neo-Nazi group. Tokyo even apologized for qualifying it in this way some time ago.

When President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was asked about Azov (there were journalists who were concerned about this), he replied that there are Azov, and there are many more such "groups" that are part of the armed forces of Ukraine. The media began to ask questions about Azov only after the start of a special military operation. For eight long years, no one "hit the nail on the finger" and did not worry about what forces were being nurtured in Ukraine. It is a continuation or revival of what raged in Europe in the 1930s.

Question: President Zelensky said that Russia intends to use tactical nuclear weapons.

Sergey Lavrov: He says a lot of things. It depends on what he drinks and smokes.

Question: Do you think it was a strategic mistake of President Zelensky to provoke Russia when there were no clear guarantees from NATO and the EU that they would support Ukraine?

Sergey Lavrov: President Zelensky came to power with a promise of peace. He said that he would achieve peace on the basis of the Minsk agreements. A few months later, he announced that he could not implement the Minsk agreements because it was impossible. V.A. Zelensky never said that this was due to martial law on the ground. According to him, it is inconceivable for Ukraine to give a special status to any part of their territory.

However, it is conceivable that Ukraine was created as a single territory, where in the west they never celebrate May 9 - Victory Day, and on the other hand, the eastern territories would never praise those heroes who are revered in the west (those who collaborated with A. Hitler). It's a complex mix of regions. Against this background, to assert that Ukraine can only be a unitary state, that no special status will be granted to any part there, even if it is required by the UN Security Council, is short-sighted. If, according to his election promises, he had sought to implement the Minsk agreements, the crisis would have been resolved long ago.

Question: Do you think the West has betrayed Vladimir Zelensky?

Sergey Lavrov: No. I think they used it against Russia. They did everything to strengthen his desire to ignore the Minsk agreements. The West is a broad concept. We are talking about the United States, Great Britain. The other part of the West, including the EU, is currently only obedient servants.

Question: Will Russia use tactical nuclear weapons?

Sergey Lavrov: Ask President Zelensky. After all, he was the one talking about it. I think that the intelligence service gave him some information. To be honest, I cannot comment on what was said by an inadequate person.

Question: As a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a nuclear power, are you considering the possibility of using nuclear weapons?

Sergey Lavrov: In 1987, the Soviet Union and the United States (Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan) decided that they had a special responsibility for world peace. They signed a declaration stating that nuclear war could not be won. Therefore, it should never be started.

Tensions grew after the Trump administration came to power in the United States. We said: why don't we try to give a positive, political signal to the whole world and repeat what Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan declared? For four years, the Trump administration has refused to do so.

Five days after president Joe Biden's inauguration, they again addressed this proposal to the American side. Joe Biden agreed to extend START III without any preconditions. In June 2021, President Joe Biden met with President Vladimir Putin in Geneva. This declaration was signed on our initiative. Russia and the U.S. have said there should be no nuclear war. It's just unthinkable. Then we began to promote the adoption of the same obligations within the framework of the permanent members of the UN Security Council. This was done at the initiative of Russia, not the United States, France or the United Kingdom. In January of this year, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council at the level of heads of state and government adopted a statement that we initiated and supported all these years.

Question: So there is no question of using nuclear weapons?

Sergey Lavrov: The Russian-American statement and the statement of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council were adopted at Russia's insistence.

Question: Let's go back to the Donbass region: the DPR, the LPR. For Russia, there is no question of the independence of these republics. What happens if negotiations between Russia and Ukraine succeed? Will there be an additional agreement? Will Russia leave Sumy, Kharkov, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Zaporozhye?

Sergey Lavrov: I thought you were a journalist and you were a spy. For obvious reasons, I will not discuss the military operation.

We recognize the DPR and LPR within the borders of these regions as part of the former Ukrainian SSR. When the Minsk agreements were signed, these regions were divided (each republic roughly in half). At the moment, the people's militia of the DPR and LPR is fighting to regain the lost territories.

The fact is that when the referendum was held in 2014, the question concerned all the territories of these former regions. However, after that, the leaders of the coup d'état launched a war, which they called the "anti-terrorist operation". They have severed a significant portion of each of these regions. Yes, we recognize the LPR and the DPR in their borders proclaimed as a result of the referendum.

Question: Does this concern Mariupol and Volnovakha, which is part of the Donetsk region?

Sergey Lavrov: Yes.

Question: If the two sides come to an agreement and recognize this (although President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky said that this will not happen), will the struggle for Donbass continue to the end? Where are the red lines?

Sergey Lavrov: I cannot seriously discuss what President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky is saying. He is constantly changing his point of view in diametrically opposite directions.

President Zelenskyy took the initiative to hold talks. It was accepted. At a certain point, we were disappointed, because the Ukrainian side constantly changed its point of view, they came to the negotiations late or left earlier. On March 29 this year, a meeting was held in Istanbul. The Ukrainian side brought a document there, which stated that they would not become members of any military alliance, would adhere to a neutral status. In response, we requested security guarantees from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and a number of other countries. All this was initialed by the heads of delegations. It was noted that these security guarantees will not apply to Crimea and the territories in the east of Ukraine.

This was not our formulation, but the Ukrainian side. Now President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky says that he is not ready for this. In other words, they began to move away from these positions. However, there is a paper signed by the head of the Ukrainian delegation. Before we can seriously discuss what President Zelensky is saying today or tomorrow, it is necessary to understand whether this person and his team can be trusted.

Question: Has an agreement been reached in Istanbul on the withdrawal of Russian troops from Kiev?

Sergey Lavrov: We have changed the configuration of our military presence. This was announced immediately after the istanbul meeting, because we believed that they had submitted for consideration what could form the basis of the agreement. As a gesture of goodwill, the configuration was changed in the Chernihiv and Kiev regions.

However, this was not appreciated. Instead, there was an immediate dramatization in bucha. This story was "played out" in the same way as with the Skripals in Salisbury, the Malaysian Boeing, A.Navalny, A.Litvinenko. It was "played", but immediately disappeared from the agenda when we presented reinforced concrete facts that they cannot dispute.

Question: Russia has appointed its mayors in Berdyansk and Melitopol. It was stated that they were going to convene a referendum that they would not remain part of Ukraine. It's true? Is that your plan?

Sergey Lavrov: Isn't this the highest manifestation of democracy – a referendum? People speak out for what they want.

Question: Does this mean that you will draw a land and water border through the territory of Sumy and Kharkiv regions? If you look at Zaporozhye and Mykolaiv...

Sergey Lavrov: In these regions, people have suffered for eight long years. Neo-Nazis forbade them to speak Russian language, were not allowed to keep the memory of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War, to hold parades and any events dedicated to the memory of their grandmothers, grandfathers, parents, fallen heroes of the Second World War.

Now these people have expelled neo-Nazis. Now they want to decide for themselves who will lead everything – their mayor, their legislative assembly. I believe that in many respects this is a manifestation of democracy after so many years of suppression.

Question: Has Ukraine lost more land than it has gained through negotiations in Donbass?

Sergey Lavrov: This is the decision of those who led Ukraine, who sabotaged the implementation of the Minsk agreements, despite the decision of the UN Security Council. We are not going to change the regime in Ukraine. We've talked about this many times. We want Ukrainians to decide for themselves how they want to live on. The main thing is not to repeat the fate of the Minsk agreements. Then they said that they did not want to have anything to do with the people who committed the coup d'état, who banned Russian culture, language and everything that people hold dear. Then they were promised by the European Union and deceived them.

We want people to have the freedom to choose what to do in Ukraine.

Question: Russia is under the largest number of sanctions in the world. How long can you endure?

Sergey Lavrov: I don't think we are arguing in the context of "how much we will endure". Enduring means going through difficulties and hoping that sooner or later everything will end.

Russia has been under sanctions for a long time: first there was the Jackson-Vanik amendment (then it was canceled), the Magnitsky Act, we were "punished" for the free expression of the will of the Crimeans and the support of those who advocated the Minsk agreements, which the Ukrainian government did not want to fulfill.

We have come to an unequivocal conclusion: we cannot rely on our Western colleagues in any area of life of strategic importance: food security (we provide it ourselves after 2014), defense and other strategic areas where advanced technologies and high-tech industries are developed that will determine the future of mankind. We haven't had time to be self-sufficient in all of these areas, but in most cases we've solved the problem. We are open to cooperation with all countries that do not use illegal, illegal, unilateral measures in violation of the UN Charter.

India is among those countries with whom we cooperate on a bilateral basis and in many international organizations. This month I came to New Delhi.

Question: India is under enormous pressure to abandon all ties with Russia, in particular in the energy sector. But she didn't give up. Will this somehow affect military-technical cooperation in the purchase of critical defense systems, such as the S-400 and other weapons? Are there talks with India on this?

Sergey Lavrov: India is our good old friend. We have long called our cooperation a strategic partnership. About 20 years ago, Indian friends suggested characterizing it as a particularly privileged strategic partnership. This is a unique description of bilateral relations between Russia and India.

Long before this became a hot topic, we supported Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "Do in India" vision. They began to replace trade with the localization of the production of products necessary for India on its territory. For a long time, the use of national currencies in mutual payments between the governments of the two countries was supported.

We also support a financial messaging system similar to SWIFT. In addition, you have your own system, we have our own. We use them more and more: we have Mir, you have UPay. They are harmonized, supported by each other. This is a small amount of the total percentage of trade, but it is gradually growing. On defense, we can provide India with anything it wants. The volume of technology transfer in the field of defence cooperation is essentially unprecedented compared to all of India's other partners.

Question: We have seen that the United States has also talked about the S-400, but perhaps cooperation will become more difficult in the future?

Sergey Lavrov: You know, when the Americans say that they are in favor of "democracy in the whole world", they mean one specific thing: they themselves decide who will be called a democracy, who deserves to be treated kindly by Washington. You just need to look at the list of those who were invited to the "summit of democracies". It will become clear that we are not talking about real democracy, but about something else. Now Americans around the world are setting their ambassadors the number one task every day to go to the Foreign Ministry, to the governments of those states in which they are accredited, and to convince countries to stop talking to Russia and join the sanctions against Russia.

Long before this crisis, I was talking to Americans and Europeans. At all conferences, they constantly talk about democracy and introduce the phrases "rule of law" and "democracy". I asked them, what about the add-on? In addition to the national level, we want democracy and the rule of law in the international arena. They don't like it. They are trying to gather everyone in this anti-Russian camp, including India, China, Turkey, Egypt – countries with their own thousand-year-old histories of civilization and culture. They're not even ashamed to publicly tell you what to do. Something is wrong not only with their manners (however, this has always been true), but also with their mentality.

US Secretary of State E. Blinken says that the United States, they say, has not yet decided whether to impose sanctions against India for the purchase of the S-400. It's said publicly: They haven't yet made a decision on what's good for you. Under Secretary Sherman says they should help India understand what is important to its security.

Question: I think your colleague answered quite harshly how India will conduct foreign policy.

Sergey Lavrov: I have great respect for Sergei Jaishankar. He is an experienced diplomat, a true patriot of his country. When it says it will make a decision based on what India considers necessary for its development and security, it commands respect. Not many countries can say that.

Q: You mentioned China. For us, the China factor is very important. Russia has a unique relationship in terms of ties with China and with India. Recently, during one of the visits, the deputy national security adviser of the United States said that if India continues to ties with Russia, there will be consequences. He said that if China committed such an incident again, no one would come to India's aid. This statement, of course, is strange. China is still on Indian territory. And they never came to "help". What will Russia say?

Sergey Lavrov: We believe that any conflict should be resolved on the basis of direct negotiations between the two sides. This was the case in Ukraine. Two sides: the "separatists" (for us they are self-proclaimed republics) on the one hand and the government of Ukraine, which came to power as a result of a coup d'état, on the other, agreed, and this document was approved by the UN Security Council. Another thing is that the government, at the instigation of the West, failed to fulfill its obligations. We believe that this principle should be applied everywhere.

We welcome the resumption of contacts between the military of India and China, negotiations at the political level, including by the foreign ministers. We hope that this situation will be resolved. We cannot use threats that are perfectly normal for Americans – if not in the way they say, there will be consequences. It's their favorite statement. We want to promote formats in which India, Russia and China will participate together.

It all began in 1996-1997, when Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov proposed to create a "troika" of RIC (Russia, India, China). We continue to meet. The last meeting was in November 2021 and it was the eighteenth ministerial meeting. Political scientists of our countries also meet. Maybe it's not a very public format, but it's very useful. We are promoting this idea within the framework of the SCO in order to welcome the full membership of India and Pakistan in this organization. It also creates additional prerequisites for India and China to be together, in the company of their neighbors, to create an atmosphere of trust.

Question: Europe intends to stop gas supplies from Russia. In the summer, their policies could get worse. Do you seek to de-ideologize the global energy market through payments in rubles? How do you propose to move on if they stop taking supplies?

Sergey Lavrov: There will be no changes for european countries that purchase our gas. The reason for our decision is obvious and understandable. They "froze" Russian assets in euros, yen, pounds sterling for more than $ 300 billion. Basically, this money was stored in Western banks after we received payments from Western countries for gas supplies. In other words, they paid us and stole our own money because it is a currency associated with the Western banking system. What we offered them: they will not pay directly to Gazprom PJSC, to its bank accounts abroad, but will pay through the bank (Gazprombank is an independent company). They will pay the same amount they have to pay under existing contracts, but they will transfer the money to a special account at that bank. There will also be a parallel account in rubles. So, they will pay in euros, and within Gazprombank this money will be transferred to ruble accounts. Gazprom pjsc will receive rubles from this account.

Question: So you have absolutely nothing to lose on the money that Russia should get from Europe? So you don't lose anything?

Sergey Lavrov: Yes, exactly. Now they won't be able to keep that money in their banks, money that they don't just owe us, but that they've already paid us. It seems to me that this does not contradict the contracts. They will still pay in euros or dollars (whatever the currency of the contract), but we will have guarantees that this theft will not happen again.

Question: Let's return to the intensification of military efforts in eastern Ukraine. As for the cruiser Moskva, which was sunk, was this one of the factors in the intensification of hostilities?

Sergey Lavrov: The special military operation in eastern Ukraine is aimed, as it was announced from the very beginning, at the complete liberation of the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics. It will continue. The next phase of the operation is now beginning. That will be an important point. What happened to the cruiser is a question for the Russian Ministry of Defense. They explained what had happened. I have nothing to add to that.