The West's sanctions against Russia show that it is unable to influence Kyiv to make it do what it has to, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a presentation at the Mongolian Foreign Ministry on Thursday.
“We are not asking and will not ask our Western partners to lift these sanctions, and we have never initiated such discussions. They get nervous themselves both at meetings with us and in their public statements, saying that, ‘as concerns sanctions against Russia, the sanctions will be lifted immediately once Russia implements the Minsk Agreements’,” Lavrov said.
“This is their desire and at the same time their helplessness. Our Western partners perfectly know that Russia is not mentioned in the Minsk Agreements at all, but virtually each paragraph in them lists problems facing the Ukrainian leadership and the deadlines by which these problems need to be solved. All this has been thwarted,” he said.
“Now our Western partners have realized that they are unable to properly bring up their charges in Kyiv so that they comply with their promises. And so they are trying to pass the buck to us,” Lavrov said.
