🎙 Speech and answers to media questions by S.V. Lavrov following the results of the Antalya Diplomatic Forum (Antalya, March 2, 2024)
Main points:
🔸 The UN is not a bad organization. Its Charter contains all the principles necessary to ensure justice in international relations . Those who, until recently, had a decisive weight in the world economy and in technological development, decided that in order to maintain their elusive dominance , they needed to manipulate international law. This is the main problem of today .
🔸 We have no lack of goodwill [to negotiate with Ukraine]. We see his absence from the other side. Not so much goodwill, but a lack of understanding of what is happening .
🔸 The “war camp” in Europe is still strong . If anyone had any doubts, then the latest statements by French President E. Macron, Pentagon head L. Austin, and the conversation of German generals indicate that the “war party” does not want to change its course towards inflicting “strategic defeat” on Russia on the field battle.
🔸 We will definitely respond [to the confiscation of Russian assets]. We have the opportunity not to return funds that Western countries kept in Russia. They were frozen in response to the seizure of Russian state reserves. There can be no doubt that we will act in a mirror manner.
🔸 The West must understand (and many have already understood this) that they made a mistake in Ukraine and let them correct it themselves. We will not stop them from doing this in such a way that it seems to them that they were “saving their face.”
🔸 A Palestinian state is not a whim, not just a UN decision once made. Without its implementation, it is impossible to stop the violence in the Middle East , to calm the Arab “street”, which sees injustice and how they are trying to perpetuate this injustice.
🔸 We are sorry that the Armenian leadership has made, apparently, a conscious decision to consistently pursue a policy towards worsening relations with Russia. This is not an ally-ship.
WtR