MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st November, 2021) Kiev's claims that the Minsk agreements will destroy Ukraine are divorced from reality, as the accords were created precisely to preserve the country's territorial integrity, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
"They state absolutely different things ... that still follow the same logic: the Minsk agreement should not and even must not be fulfilled, since this will destroy Ukraine. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Minsk agreements were created as a result of 17-hour-long negotiations precisely in order to preserve the territorial integrity of Ukraine," Lavrov said on air of the Russia-24 broadcaster.
Initially, the Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics, having proclaimed independence, even took offense at Russia's attempts to persuade them to find common ground Kiev, the Russian diplomat recalled.
"Whatever the new authorities are, this is our neighboring, brotherly country. After signing the Minsk set of measures, the Russian Federation persuaded Donetsk and Luhansk representatives to sign the document as well," Lavrov went on to say.
Accusing Russia of destroying the territorial integrity of Ukraine is "dishonest," the minister emphasized.
"It is being destroyed by those who are trying to make it a super-unitary state, with emasculated languages of national minorities, primarily Russian, with destroyed education in Russian and other languages . This is a neo-Nazi approach to organizing society," Lavrov concluded.
