Sergey Lavrov: “It is clear that, when and if (hopefully when) the time comes to sign future agreements, the question of the legitimacy of the person signing them on behalf of Ukraine will be resolved”

Photo: MFA

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s statement and answers to media questions at a joint news conference following talks with Minister of External Affairs of India Subrahmanyam Jaishankar

Moscow, August 21, 2025

Ladies and gentlemen,

My Indian colleague and friend Minister of External Affairs of India Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and I had talks as part of the Minister’s visit to the Russian Federation, which included yesterday’s meeting of the Intergovernmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technical and Cultural Cooperation. On the Russian side, the commission is co-chaired by First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov. Minister Jaishankar is absolutely pleased with the outcomes of that meeting as we found out today.

The participants discussed joint cooperation projects in energy (including nuclear), outer space exploration, the manufacturing industry, transport, and infrastructure, to name a few. These projects are under consideration by the corresponding agencies and will definitely take bilateral trade, and economic and investment cooperation to a whole new level.

Yesterday, the co-chairs noted that last year bilateral trade was up by 15 percent setting an all-time high record in the post-Soviet history of Moscow-New Delhi relations.

We welcome the progress in implementing the North-South International Transport Corridor project, in which our Indian friends and we have shared interest. We agreed to step up this work with other participants in the project. Ambitious plans to organise and scale up cargo transport along the Northern Sea Route are in place.

Cooperation in the hydrocarbon sector and Russian oil shipments to the Indian market is making wide strides. Both sides are interested in implementing joint energy production projects in the Russian Far East and the Russian Arctic shelf, among other sites.

The economic base of our special privileged strategic partnership is getting stronger in a steady and progressive manner which underscores the special nature of Russian-Indian relations. We are convinced this strategic partnership meets the fundamental interests of our respective peoples and contributes to regional security and stability, which is undeniably important considering the challenging international circumstances that we are operating under.

Russia-India political interaction and the political dialogue at the top level, as well as at the level of foreign ministries and other government agencies, boasts a fast-paced dynamic.

Today, we focused on upcoming events that will be held as part of this dialogue, including preparations for President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin’s visit to India before the end of this year. A large package of documents will be put together for this summit.

We welcome excellent traditions that have taken shape in military cooperation, joint exercises, and military-technical cooperation, which are steeped in solid historical foundations as well.

With regard to international developments in the context of Ukraine, following President Putin’s telephone conversation with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, we informed our Indian guests in detail about the state of the discussions with our US partners, primarily, the talks in Alaska during President Putin’s visit to the United States at the invitation of President Trump. We also looked into how this push for a speedy settlement can be realised in practice in a manner that will fully take into account the legitimate security interests of all participants.

We discussed the situation in Afghanistan, and we both think that it should be included in regional processes in pragmatic aspects.

We talked about the Middle East settlement and the humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territories. We discussed the state of the Iranian nuclear programme and a number of other international issues.

We enjoy close coordination at various multilateral institutions, such as the UN, BRICS, the SCO, and the G20, and agreed to keep it that way.

I believe that today’s talks were exceedingly useful and came as a supplement to the discussion on economic matters that took place during the Minister’s visit. We agreed to hold more contacts in the future focusing on top-quality preparations for President Putin’s visit to India, and more.

Question: Speaking about security guarantees for Ukraine, who and how, from Moscow’s point of view, should ensure new possible agreements, given the negative experience of the Minsk agreements?

Sergey Lavrov: The history of the issue is not limited to the Minsk agreements. Let me remind you that in April 2022, only a few weeks after the start of the special military operation, negotiations were launched. They began in Belarus and later continued in Istanbul. These discussions focused on eliminating the root causes of the conflict.

As President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stressed, at that time the Ukrainian side proposed a draft settlement document, which was initialed by both the Ukrainian and Russian delegations. It outlined the basic principles for ensuring security in the post-conflict period.

The proposal focused on ensuring security in an honest way and collectively: above all, by creating a group of guarantor states involving permanent members of the UN Security Council. Germany and Turkiye were also mentioned. The list of guarantors was to remain open to any countries willing to participate. Their role would be to guarantee Ukraine’s security under principles similar to Article 5 of the Washington Treaty on establishing NATO. Meanwhile, it was clearly stipulated that Ukraine would remain a neutral, non-nuclear, and non-aligned state, refraining from joining NATO or any other military alliances.

These principles – neutrality, non-nuclear and non-aligned status – were enshrined in the 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine and served as the foundation for its recognition as an independent state.

However, the Istanbul agreements, essentially approved at the time, were subsequently undermined by the intervention of then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, supported by other Western representatives. As a result, a genuine opportunity for peace was lost. Yet we still regard the principle of collective security guarantees, initially proposed by Ukraine, as both natural and relevant today.

Following the recent Russia-US summit in Alaska, which achieved significant progress in defining the contours and parameters of a potential settlement, European leaders travelled to Washington to accompany Mr Zelensky. There, they attempted to promote their own agenda: building so-called security guarantees based on isolating Russia, rallying the West around Ukraine, and persisting in their aggressive confrontational policy of containing Russia with the aim of inflicting a strategic defeat on our country. This cannot but evoke a feeling of full and categorical rejection. All the more so as the Ukrainian regime, its representatives are making very specific comments about the current situation, clearly demonstrating that they are not interested in achieving a sustainable, fair, and long-term settlement.

There is one Mikhail Podolyak, who regularly speaks on behalf of President Vladimir Zelensky. In commenting on developments related to Ukraine’s security guarantees, he said the following: for the time being, Ukraine would get such security guarantees and reconcile itself to part of its territories “being temporarily under occupation,” but as soon as it got an agreement on security guarantees, Ukraine would urge the West to destroy the Russian Federation with sanctions and annihilate its economy. This means that the aims harboured by the current Ukrainian leaders and certainly encouraged by the Western sponsors of the Kiev regime are directed against the efforts being undertaken by US President Donald Trump, with whom we actively and matter-of-factly cooperate in the search for long-term and stable settlement and removal of the prime causes of the conflict.   The opposite side, on the contrary, seeks to exacerbate these causes by creating “alliances” for Ukraine’s security based on anti-Russian grounds and aggressive plans retained with regard to our country.

A representative of Mr Zelensky’s Executive Office went on record as saying that it made no sense to discuss issues of peace settlement as long as there were no clear definitions of security guarantees. This means that Ukraine, first and foremost, wants the West to guarantee the preservation of the current neo-Nazi, Russophobic and aggressive regime, which grossly violates the principles of human rights enshrined in the UN Charter and demanding respect for the rights of any person regardless of race, gender, language or religion, on what will remain of the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

We have repeatedly highlighted the fact that the West (which is teaching everyone how to ensure human rights in keeping with various neo-liberal doctrines) has never in all these years used the collocation “human rights,” while discussing Ukraine.  This means that the West is satisfied with how the Ukrainian regime is banishing the Russian language from all spheres – education, culture, mass media, and more – banning the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and singing praises to and extolling Stepan Bandera and other collaborationists convicted by the Nuremberg Trials for cooperation with Hitler’s Germany. The West is completely satisfied with this regime.

When, against this background, Ursula von der Leyen and other officials in Brussels say with emotion that they will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes because allegedly it defends the “European values,” this amounts to an acknowledgement of guilt and a confession of what these “European values” are all about.

Let me stress once again that Russia has always been in favour of an honest dialogue and the principles of security guarantees that were coordinated in Istanbul in April 2022 at the Ukrainian delegation’s initiative. We supported them in 2022 and we are supporting them now, because they are based on the principles of collective and indivisible security. All other, unilateral conspiracies lack prospects. As is clear from the West’s current discussions with Ukraine, all these plans are linked with providing guarantees through a foreign military intervention to some part of the Ukrainian territory.

I think those who harbour such plans are just trying to draw attention to their persons. I hope they understand that this will be absolutely unacceptable for Russia and for all sober-minded political forces in Europe.

Question: Given the recent statements and actions by the leaders of the so-called “coalition of the willing,” could their objective be to disrupt the negotiation process between Russia and the United States? How can this be countered? Should we expect any provocations from them?

Recently, news emerged that Vladimir Zelensky claimed a meeting with President Vladimir Putin was supposedly already being prepared. Could you confirm or deny this?

Sergey Lavrov: As for the motives driving this “coalition of the willing,” I see ample evidence that this activity is precisely aimed at undermining the progress that has clearly emerged following the Alaska summit and the preceding contacts between representatives of the US Administration and the Russian side.

Foreign analysts and commentators, describing the current situation and the unprecedented activity of European representatives, arrive at the same conclusion: the goal is to “hijack” the agenda – which is oriented towards addressing the root causes of the crisis and thereby achieving a sustainable settlement – and to shift everything into the realm of providing security guarantees for Ukraine without Russia’s participation, indeed by ignoring Russia’s interests altogether, while emphasising the need to protect Ukraine from future attacks. But let me stress, that they want to protect a country that espouses neo-Nazi values, grossly violates the rights of national minorities, legislatively seeks to eradicate the Russian language in all spheres of life, and bans the canonical Orthodox Church. This is the Ukraine Europe wishes to take under its security guarantees. It has become so blatantly obvious that I hope this reckless venture will fail, and we will continue to follow the course clearly agreed upon by Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump during their meeting in Alaska and subsequent telephone contacts.

Regarding the meeting mentioned by Vladimir Zelensky, recall that he long insisted that he would never negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin. To this day, he has not revoked his three-year-old executive order explicitly prohibiting negotiations with Vladimir Putin.

Zelensky’s sudden eagerness to arrange a summit with the Russian leader is merely an attempt to feign a constructive commitment to the settlement process – when in reality, it is a bid to replace the serious, arduous, painstaking work of agreeing upon principles for a sustainable resolution to the crisis with cheap theatrics reminiscent of KVN (Club of the Funny and Inventive People, a popular Russian merry-making TV show) or Kvartal 95, tricks the current Ukrainian leader employs quite actively, fearing waning attention. As is already happening.

President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated his readiness to meet, including with Vladimir Zelensky, provided it is understood that all issues requiring high-level consideration will be thoroughly prepared, with experts and ministers furnishing appropriate recommendations – and provided it is clear that, when and if (hopefully when) the time comes to sign future agreements, the question of the legitimacy of the person signing them on behalf of Ukraine will be resolved.

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