Lavrov claims Ukraine could have kept 1991 borders if Europeans had honored Minsk agreements

UN, September 23. /TASS/. Ukraine could have remained within the borders of 1991, if Europeans hadn’t engaged in fraud, but they failed to suppress their "eternal instinct to lie" and try to achieve their goals through criminal methods, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a meeting of the UN Security Council on Ukraine.

"If Europeans hadn’t resorted to fraud and had forced the opposition to comply with the agreement signed in February 2014 under the guarantee of Berlin, Paris, and Warsaw, it would have preserved Ukraine’s territorial integrity within the very borders of 1991 that [Vladimir] Zelensky and his Western patrons dream of," the minister noted. "But Europeans failed to suppress their age-old instinct to lie and try to achieve their goals by criminal means."

The Minsk agreements were signed, Lavrov continued, which were "greatly requested by Berlin and Paris," but, as they later admitted themselves, no one intended to implement them.

"The agreements were signed on February 12, 2015, and on February 17, at Russia’s initiative, they were unanimously approved by the UN Security Council," he said. "By the way, Article 25 of the [UN] Charter requires all members of the organization to comply with and implement the decisions of the Security Council. However, [the then] Ukrainian President [Pyotr] Poroshenko (listed by Rosfinmonitoring as a person involved in extremist activities or terrorism - TASS) categorically refused to do this, and his guardians in Berlin and Paris did not even try to somehow reason with their ward."

And with Emmanuel Macron coming to power in France, "there was a surge in traditional French activity," Lavrov noted: "On December 9, 2019, a summit of the Normandy Four - Germany, France, Russia, and Ukraine - was convened, where the Kiev regime was already represented by Zelensky, who came to power under high-profile slogans about establishing peace and good-neighborly relations with Russia and putting an end to attacks on the Russian language."

In Paris, a declaration was adopted confirming the need to fully implement the Minsk agreements, including enshrining the special status of certain regions of Donbass in the Ukrainian constitution.

"This status did not imply anything extraordinary, only the right to use the Russian language and to exercise local self·government," Lavrov explained. "If the 2015 Minsk agreements, which were reaffirmed in Paris in 2019 under Zelensky, had been implemented as required by the Security Council, Ukraine would now remain within the very borders of 1991 -- except, of course, for Crimea, the issue of which has long been settled, and everyone understands this perfectly well."