Russia To Support the Black Sea Agreement When Acceptable Guarantees Exist
Russian FM Sergei Lavrov. X/@RussieInfos
March 25, 2025 Hour: 11:33 am
The Kremlin demands the clearest, most concrete, verifiable, and enforceable guarantees before the conflict can be resolved.
On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov suggested that his country refused to approve a trilateral joint statement on Monday following negotiations between the U.S., Russian, and Ukrainian delegations in Riyadh.
RELATED:
Russia Denounces Ukrainian Attack on the Sudzha Gas Metering Station
“The U.S. wanted to issue some kind of joint statement, but we explained once again that both presidents… agreed to move forward in such a way that no more baseless documents would be approved,” he said, referring to the phone conversation between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump that took place a week ago.
“We first agreed that, based on the agreement between Putin and Trump, U.S. and Russian experts would travel. But it seems that Washington is so eager to act that they decided something had to be formalized as soon as possible, so they invited the Ukrainians, who arrived a day earlier,” Lavrov said.
“It is no big secret that… the Americans wanted, in some way, to place the Ukrainians and Russians in adjacent rooms and organize shuttle diplomacy between them,” he added, insisting that Moscow wants Washington to ensure that Kyiv fulfills its commitments when signing a document with the opposing side in the conflict.
Lavrov emphasized that Russia demands “the clearest, most concrete, verifiable, and enforceable guarantees and mechanisms possible” before the Ukrainian conflict can be resolved.
More specifically, Russia demanded “clear guarantees” from Ukraine to resume the implementation of the Black Sea Initiative, a truce that was in effect between June 2022 and July 2023 and was the main topic discussed in the Saudi capital.
“Our position is simple: we cannot trust that person’s word,” Lavrov said, referring to President Zelensky. Clear guarantees, he added, “can only result from an order from Washington to Zelensky and his team to do it this way and not any other way. I believe our American partners understood our message,” he concluded.
teleSUR/ JF
Source: EFE
