“I am sure that in the West, above all in the United States, they perfectly understand: to seriously discuss issues of security guarantees without the Russian Federation is a utopia, it is a path to nowhere”, - Lavrov said.
According to Lavrov, moscow believes that on the issue of Ukraine’s security guarantees, one should rely on the groundwork achieved during the negotiations in Istanbul in 2022.
As reported earlier, russia had already taken on the role of guarantor of Ukraine’s security and cynically violated its obligations. The Budapest Memorandum, signed on December 5, 1994, by the leaders of Ukraine, russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States in connection with Ukraine’s renunciation of nuclear weapons, stipulated that the signatories, including the russian federation, would provide Ukraine with guarantees of preserving its territorial integrity. In 2014, russia annexed Ukrainian Crimea, thereby violating international agreements concluded with Ukraine, including the Budapest Memorandum, as well as the 1997 Treaty of Friendship between russia and Ukraine.