Sergey Lavrov's interview with NBC: “If you believe that if there is American capital in an enterprise which is used to produce weapons to kill Russians, and you believe that be it American, be it Hungarian, be it anybody's capital that this gives impunity to those who build weapons to kill us, I don't think so, I don't think this is fair. This is kind of, I would say, imperialistic”

Photo: TV-screen

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's interview with NBC Kristen Welker, Moderator of “Meet the Press”.

Moscow, August 24, 2025

Question: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Mr. Foreign Minister, welcome to Meet the Press.

Sergey Lavrov: Thank you. And welcome to meet the Russian diplomats.

Question: Thank you so much for joining us after a very significant week. Let's dive right into the state of these talks. Has President Putin committed to a one-on-one meeting with President Zelensky?

Sergey Lavrov: Well, those are the speculations which are being spread by, first of all, Mr. Zelensky himself and his European sponsors. It was not discussed in Anchorage. It was raised later as something which is kind of impromptu, appearing from the meeting in Washington between President Trump and his guests.

President Putin received the call of President Trump after that meeting, and he clearly stated that we are ready to continue the negotiations, direct Russian-Ukrainian negotiations, which started in Istanbul and already had three rounds convened there. And he said that meetings at the top level, the summit meetings, especially between the leaders of Russia and Ukraine, must be very well prepared, so a preparatory process must be agreed. And for this, we suggested to raise the level of delegations who were meeting and will be meeting in Istanbul to address specific issues which need to be brought to the attention of President Putin and Zelensky. And those issues relate both to humanitarian, military, and to political matters.

Last time our delegations met in Istanbul, we suggested to create three working groups, including on political matters. More than one month passed already, there is no response from the Ukrainian side. And when Mr. Zelensky says the immediate priority is a meeting with Putin, well, it's basically a game. A game he is very good to play because he wants theatrics in everything he is doing. He does not care about substance. And it is not by chance that now they try, I mean the Ukrainians and the Europeans who attended the meeting in Washington, they try to distort what was discussed in Anchorage between President Trump and President Putin regarding, in particular, the security guarantees.

I read some Bloomberg reports yesterday and today saying that the negotiations between the U.S. and Russia on security guarantees for Ukraine have been, in fact, undermined because of the demands by Moscow to include the principle of indivisible security. It's a very telling statement.

Indivisible security is something which was enshrined in many documents adopted by consensus at summits of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, in particular in Istanbul in 1999, and in Astana in 2010. This principle goes like: no one can strengthen their security at the expense of the security of others. No organization in the European space can pretend to dominate in military and political matters. And NATO has been doing exactly the opposite. So, when we are accused that by flagging the principle of indivisible security we are undermining the process of negotiations between the U.S., Russia and Ukraine, this means that the people admit that they want divisible security, that they want security built for Ukraine, which is being discussed now, but built against Russia. Those discussions which took place yesterday, before yesterday, after the Washington meeting, they clearly indicate that people see security as only security for Ukraine and they are prepared to send an intervention force, an occupying force, to the Ukrainian territory to deter Russia. They don't conceal that this is the goal. And this is not the way to handle the situation.

President Putin and President Trump in Anchorage discussed the security guarantees, and President Putin recalled that in April 2022 in Istanbul, during negotiations initiated by the Ukrainian side, very soon after we started our special military operation, during those negotiations in April 2022, the Ukrainian delegation presented the draft principles to reach a treaty, to reach agreement on ending the war. Those principles were initialed by both delegations. As regards the security guarantees for Ukraine, those principles proposed by the Ukrainian delegation, I underline this once again, they provided for the creation of a group of guarantors, this group containing permanent members of the Security Council: Russia, U.S., China, UK and France, plus they mentioned Germany, Turkiye and any other country which would be interested to join this group of guarantors. And the guarantors would be guaranteeing the security of Ukraine, which must be neutral, which must be non-aligned with any military bloc and which must be non-nuclear.

Question: Mr. Foreign Minister, we are going to get to the security guarantees, we're going to have a big conversation about that, but I just want to stick to this idea of a one-on-one meeting between President Putin and President Zelensky. It's not the Zelensky thing at the White House that President Putin told President Trump he's willing to meet face-to-face with President Zelensky. And I guess the question is, how can you claim to be serious about a peace process when you can't tell me directly, is President Putin willing to meet with President Zelensky? Is that the plan?

Sergey Lavrov: Look, I hope that those who are interested in what is going on around Ukraine, they follow the statements of President Putin, especially when they try to see some wrongdoing on our side. President Putin repeated this statement, that he is ready to meet with President Zelensky.

Actually yesterday at my press conference after my meeting with the Minister of India, I repeated this, that he is ready to meet with President Zelensky, provided this meeting is really going to decide something.

To meet for Zelensky to have another opportunity to be on stage is not what we believe is useful. We are not against him playing games and playing various shows, but it is not going to resolve the issue, because he publicly stated that he is not going to discuss any territories, thus challenging President Trump, and other American colleagues who stated the territorial issue must be on the table. He clearly stated that nobody can prohibit him from joining NATO, which again categorically challenges what President Trump was saying, and quite a number of other things. He also said that he is not going to restore the rights of the Russian-speaking people and cancel legislation, which was passed long before this Special Military Operation, starting from 2019. A series of legislation was passed in Ukrainian Parliament, prohibiting Russian language, exterminating Russian language, Russian culture, Russian education, Russian media, and canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

So when he said that, I don't give a damn about what you are saying, what President Trump believes must be a part of the solution, but I am ready to meet, just to do what? So if we are all going to be concentrated on, you know, imaginary effect, it's not what diplomacy is about, it's what the showman normally do with pleasure.

So my point is that President Putin said clearly that he is ready to meet, provided this meeting is really going to have an agenda, Presidential agenda.

Question: But that's a big if. There's no meeting planned, Mr. Foreign Minister. That's a big if.

Sergey Lavrov: Kristen, I am awfully sorry, you're not listening. There is no meeting planned, and I am not challenging this, but you cannot, I think, understand what I am saying.

Putin is ready to meet with Zelensky when the agenda would be ready for a summit, and this agenda is not ready at all.

President Trump suggested, after Anchorage, several points which we share, and on some of them we agreed to show some flexibility. When President Trump brought those issues to the meeting in Washington, with Zelensky present together with his European sponsors, he clearly indicated, it was very clear to everybody that there are several principles which Washington believes must be accepted, including no NATO membership, including the discussion of territorial issues, and Zelensky said no to everything. He even said no to, as I said, to cancelling legislation prohibiting the Russian language. How could we meet with a person who is pretending to be a leader, the leader of a country, which is the only country on Earth to have prohibited a language, not to mention that this is one of the official UN languages. In Israel, Arabic language is not prohibited. In Palestine and other Arab countries, Hebrew is not prohibited. But Ukraine does whatever they believe is necessary to promote the Russophobic, nazist agenda, and the West, which is normally crazy about human rights when they discuss anything anywhere, but in relation to Ukraine, the words "human rights" were never used during those years after the coup in 2014.

So yes, he is ready to meet, but no, we cannot meet just for him to have a picture and to say that, now I am legitimate.

Legitimacy is another matter, because irrespective of when this meeting might take place, and it must be very well prepared, the issue of who is going to sign the deal on the Ukrainian side is a very serious issue.

Question: You don't think President Zelensky is the legitimate leader of Ukraine? President Putin doesn't recognize him as the legitimate leader of Ukraine?

Sergey Lavrov: No, we recognize him as de facto head of the regime. And in this capacity, we are ready to meet with him.

But when it comes to signing legal documents, the entire picture is just part of it, which suits you. When we come to a stage where you have to sign documents, we would need a very clear understanding by everybody that the person who is signing is legitimate.

And according to the Ukrainian constitution, Mr. Zelensky is not, at the moment.

Question: Okay, well, he is a democratically elected President. Mr. Foreign Minister, let's keep moving. President Trump told French President Macron this week, quote, "I think Putin wants to make a deal for me." Is that accurate? Does President Putin want to make a deal for President Trump?

Sergey Lavrov: Well, I would not go in this semantic, you know, exercise.

President Putin was invited by President Trump. He visited Alaska. They had a very substantive meeting in Anchorage. They discussed the practical way, not just who is going to meet whom and what kind of broadcasting would be provided. They discussed real things regarding security. The violation of Russian security interests was one of the root causes of what has happened. And this relates to many years of lies when we were promised, starting from 1990 and then many times we were promised that NATO would not be expanding. And the OSCE summit documents, which I quoted, said in the past, and nobody canceled it, that no organization must claim superiority in Europe, and NATO has been doing exactly the opposite. So the security guarantees which Russia presented several times. In 2008, we suggested to sign a pact between Russia and NATO. And it was ignored. In 2021, before we had to take a decision on launching the Special Military Operation, we suggested two treaties, one between Russia and the United States, and one between Russia and NATO. This was also ignored in a very, I would say, arrogant way.

Blinken, who was Secretary of State at the time, told me when we met in Geneva in January 2022, he said, "Forget about this. We can discuss some limits on the weapons which we, the West, would supply to Ukraine. But NATO membership is not for discussion with anybody." When I told him that this bluntly violates the principle of indivisible security, he said, "The indivisible security in OSCE is political declaration." But political declaration signed by the leaders, I think, is something which just out of decency, out of diplomatic and political decency, you have to respect.

Question: Okay. Mr. Foreign Minister, we have a lot to get to, so I do want to keep moving. Just this week, Russia bombed an American-owned factory near the Hungarian border. I've spoken to people who frankly see that as a slap in the face to President Trump, to the entire peace process. Isn't it?

Sergey Lavrov: Well, I would say that those who are sincerely interested in understanding what is going on should know by now that never, ever Russia deliberately targeted any sites which are not linked to military abilities of Ukraine.

Question: This is an electronic factory, though, sir. This is an electronic factory. I've spoken to people on the ground there. It builds coffee machines, among other electronics. This is not a military site.

Sergey Lavrov: Well, I understand that some people are really naive, and when they see a coffee machine in the window, they believe that this is the place where coffee machines are produced.

Our intelligence has very good information, and we target only, as I said, either military enterprises, military sites, or industrial enterprises directly involved in producing military equipment for the Ukrainian army.

And on the contrary, I never recall any concern expressed by the media in the West regarding the activities of Ukrainian armed forces when they, for example, in the Kursk region, when they invaded it one year ago, there is no military targets at all. All the targets which they have been hitting daily are civilian. They, by the way, took civilian hostages from there who had nothing to do with the conflict. Recently, they undertook the third attempt to blow up the Crimean bridge. They attacked, a few days ago, another nuclear power station. They used to attack the one in Zaporozhye. Now they attack the nuclear power station in Smolensk. And they continue to do this, they continue to exercise terrorist attacks. There is no other way to call them.

But if you believe that if there is American capital in an enterprise which is used to produce weapons to kill Russians, and you believe that be it American, be it Hungarian, be it anybody's capital that this gives impunity to those who build weapons to kill us, I don't think so, I don't think this is fair. This is kind of, I would say, imperialistic.

Question: Mr. Foreign Minister, just to confirm, you are confirming that Russia did in fact target and attack the American-owned company that was hit.

Sergey Lavrov: You should be professor in the Soviet universities because you twisted very interestingly what I said.

I did not say that I confirmed that incident. I never heard of it. I just asked a rhetorical question. Do you believe that if there is an enterprise producing weapons and being part of the Ukrainian military machine intended to produce things to kill Russian citizens, and just because this enterprise happens to have some American capital in it, it should be immune? That was my question.

I haven't heard about the episode, and if you can send me some reference to this incident to which you referred, I would look at it.

Question: Okay. Mr. Foreign Minister, President Trump says he thinks President Putin wants to end the war, but if you are serious about peace, why not stop dropping bombs?

Sergey Lavrov: There was some interruption, but we are dropping bombs. We come again and again to the same issue. We are dropping bombs on the targets which are directly involved in building Ukrainian military machines targeting the Russian civilians and continuing the war which Ukrainians started by instigation from the Biden administration, from the Europeans, those who supported the coup in 2014, and later were doing everything to turn Ukraine into an instrument to contain Russia. Lately, a few years ago, it was announced that Ukraine is an instrument to inflict strategic defeat on the Russian Federation.

So when I give the examples of what we are doing, and this has been explained repeatedly, if you can provide us a proof that we hit any civilian target indiscriminately, a target not linked to the military machine of Ukraine, we would be looking into this.

But the facts of Ukrainians hitting purposefully civilian targets are plentiful, and they are available in the information which we are circulating to the international community.

Question: Mr. Foreign Minister, here are the facts. Close to 50,000 civilians have either been killed or injured in this war. Russia has taken maternity warrants, churches, schools, hospitals, a kindergarten just this past week. So either the Russian military has terrible aim, or you are targeting civilians. Which is it?

Sergey Lavrov: Look, NBC is a very respectful structure, and I hope you are responsible for the words which you broadcast.

I ask you to send us, or to publicize the information to which you just referred, because we never targeted the civilian targets of the kind you cited. You might be missing the information because it is a fact that quite a number of churches were purposefully hit by the Ukrainian regime. Quite a number of just civilian settlements, human settlements. 

Question: But what about your actions, Mr. Foreign Minister?

Sergey Lavrov: Look, we are going by circles. I told you already what we mentioned repeatedly, that we never target civilian sites. That we only attack the sites which are directly involved in the Ukrainian military machine, which the West is trying to beef up.

And if you have any proof of what you just said about churches, kindergarten, schools, and so on and so forth, I challenge you to make it public. Make it public with the dates, with the addresses, and so on and so forth.

As I said, NBC is a very reputed broadcasting agency, and your listeners and watchers deserve to have some specific information when you make such claims.

Question: I just said all of the information is publicly available. We do have reporters on the ground who've seen these strikes with their own eyes. I do want to keep moving, though, and talk about security guarantees, an issue that you raised this week. And you have said right here today that Russia should have the power to reject any security guarantees for you.

Sergey Lavrov: Look, don't. Kristen, please don't play Zelensky. Be an honest journalist.

Question: Why should the country that's bombing Ukraine be responsible for the security of Ukraine?

Sergey Lavrov: Why is the country and countries who prepared the anti-Russian coup in Ukraine, who pumped up modern weapons in Ukraine to attack the Russian territory, countries who supported the nazist regime, prohibiting human rights, which they had to respect under the United Nations Charter and many other conventions. Why should we be swallowing all this? I explained to you, I never said that Russia must have a veto on security guarantees. But security guarantees must be subject to consensus.

I reminded you that it was okay for Ukrainians in April 2022 to present a document which could have ended this war and which started by declaring that Ukraine is going to be neutral, non-bloc, non-nuclear.

By the way, this statement, this declaration, not to have any nuclear weapons, not to be members of military blocs and to remain neutral status, this was the essence of the Ukrainian declaration of independence in 1990. And this declaration, it is because of this claim that they would never be NATO members, that they would never have nuclear weapons, and that they would be neutral, that they were recognized as an independent state.

So, if you believe that Russia being, you know, marginalized in the discussions on security issues on our borders, that this is something which is natural and normal, then I'm sorry, something is wrong with the philosophy of your channel.

Question: Just yes or no, are you talking about Russian boots on the ground?

Sergey Lavrov: Where?

Question: In Ukraine, in that region.

Sergey Lavrov: No, Russian boots on the ground are because this ground was moved, you know, was turned, was being turned in a stronghold to inflict strategic defeat upon the Russian Federation.

The Russian boots on the ground are not to protect the ground. They are to make sure that this ground would never be hosting weapons capable to reach the Russian territory.

Russian boots on the ground are because this ground is the territory where hundreds and hundreds of years ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking people were living. They actually founded those lands. They historically developed Russian culture, Russian language, and they respected Russian history.

And when all this was prohibited after the coup took place, the coup which was very bloody and very unconstitutional, we did not have any other choice but to defend these people against the bluntly nazist regime.

And the proof that the regime is nazist is plentiful, and I hope that some days your correspondents could visit and see what is going on with glorification of military criminals, collaborators of Hitler, and so on.

Question: President Trump has been in office now for seven months, and attacks against Ukraine have doubled in that time. President Putin says the war wouldn't have started under President Trump. If that's the case, why is it escalating under President Trump?

Sergey Lavrov: Look, it's becoming traditional for some of the broadcasting channels to simplify things.

When President Trump said that the war wouldn't have happened had he been President at that time, that means, in my view, that the Americans would not prepare, finance, and organize the coup to topple the legitimate president of Ukraine in February 2014.

Just one day after a deal was reached between the President at that time and the opposition, the deal guaranteed by the European Union, Germany, France, Poland, and so on. And next morning, the opposition broke the deal. The deal was to create a government of national unity and hold early elections. And the legitimate President agreed to this. The opposition signed this. The European Union guaranteed this. Next morning, there is a coup. And instead of a government of national unity, the opposition announced that, we created the government of the winners. Have you heard about this? I don't think so.

They immediately stated, when they took over all government buildings, that their first action would be canceling the status of the Russian language. And they sent military groups to storm the Crimean Parliament. That's how this all started.

So I don't think that President Trump, with his concentration on MAGA, on the national interest of the United States, on the common sense, would ever get involved in preparing a coup against a legitimate President in any country, including Ukraine.

I am answering your question, why did we think that President Trump would have avoided this situation? I answered you.

Question: But I want to ask about what is happening on the ground right now. Attacks against Ukraine have doubled in the time since President Trump took office. If President Putin has so much regard for President Trump, why is he taking actions that are undermining his push for peace?

Sergey Lavrov: President Putin has regard for President Trump, respecting President Trump's concentration on the interest, national interest of the United States, national interest and well-being, and historic heritage of the American people.

And I don't have any doubt that President Trump respects the same attitude of President Putin to protecting the national interests of Russia, to protecting basic interests of the Russian citizens, including the right to be a nation which has very rich history, very rich traditions, and which has the duty, if you wish, to support those who share the values of the Russian language, Russian world, if you wish.

And when, you know, once the United States launched a military attack, it was last century, a military attack against, I think, Nicaragua or some other Central American country, because one of the journalists was physically attacked. American citizen, American journalist. And this was never causing any questions in the American media.

We are protecting millions of ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking people who wanted to be citizens of Ukraine, but the coup leaders who took power in Ukraine declared them “terrorists”.

And Zelensky, long before the special military operation, in an interview to one Western media, he said those who are fighting the regime, who decided that the regime doesn't represent the interest after the coup, they are not people, they are “species”. And he also said that if you believe that, living in Ukraine, you belong to Russian culture, Russian history, then for the sake and safety of your children and grandchildren, get out of Ukraine and go to Russia. Is it the kind of democracy the Americans support?

Question: Mr. Foreign Minister, let me ask you about something that President Putin said in June. He said, quote, I consider the Russian and Ukrainian people to be one nation. In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours. Does President Putin believe that Ukraine has a right to exist?

Sergey Lavrov: No, this is not true.

Ukraine has the right to exist, provided it must let people go. The people whom they call “terrorists”, whom they call “species”, and who during a referendum, several referenda, in Novorossiya, in Donbass, in Crimea, decided that they belong to the Russian culture. And the government which came to power as a result of the coup was determined as a priority to exterminate everything Russian.

Question: But a number of those people did not want Russia to invade. Mr. Foreign Minister, do you acknowledge that Russia invaded Ukraine?

Sergey Lavrov: Well, democracy is about the people, you know, having a chance to vote. The people voted, the people pronounced themselves. And when it started in Crimea...

Question: Did Russia invade Ukraine? Mr. Foreign Minister, did Russia invade Ukraine?

Sergey Lavrov: No. Russia started the special military operation to defend the people whom Zelensky and his predecessor did not consider as humans. They called them “beings, species”. You should look, you should really...

I understand that you need something to sell today. But if you are raising and touching upon so serious things, my suggestion is to take a look at the history of Ukrainian development after the coup in 2014. I have some material.

Question: But it’s a yes-or-no question, it’s a yes-or-no question, Mr. Foreign Minister, do you acknowledge Russia invaded Ukraine?

Sergey Lavrov: I said to you that we started the special military operation to protect the people whom the regime declared terrorists and enemies, and whom the regime was bombing.

Look, one thing, one thing about the facts. You were asking me about churches and so on, allegedly bombed by Russia. One very blunt thing, the simplest on Earth. And I would ask you as a journalist whether you are professionally proud of what you are doing.

In April 2022, when a deal was negotiated in Istanbul, but the British and the Biden administration prohibited the Ukrainian regime to endorse this deal, there was an incident in Bucha, the outskirts of Kiev, when as a gesture of goodwill to make the deal I mentioned happen, Russians withdrew from that part of the Ukrainian territory.

This place called Bucha. It was retaken by Ukrainian authorities, and the mayor of Bucha was on TV saying how good that we are back in our city.

And two days later, a BBC broadcasting team showed the images of central street of that Bucha with bodies, dozens of bodies lying in some interesting order. They immediately accused Russia, they immediately, I mean the West, introduced new packages of sanctions.

And we still, three and a half years thereafter, we cannot get any response to our official request to circulate, to share some information about what actually happened there.

Several times when I was in New York for the General Assembly sessions, I was meeting with the media, including NBC correspondents, and I said, this Bucha incident was used to raise stakes against Russia in this situation. Can you, and we requested, the Secretary General of the United Nations, of the OSCE, other organizations, can you make sure that the names of the persons whose bodies were shown by the BBC are made public? Silence.

Then I asked, last year and the year before last, I asked at my press conference, the UN correspondents, guys, normally journalists are very intrusive, they would like to know facts. Can you start a journalistic investigation? Can you demand that the names of the people whose bodies were shown, were broadcast by the BBC, be made public? So, I think it would be an interesting case for NBC as well.

Question: Alright. Mr. Foreign Minister, I understand there is a lot of history. We want to talk about what's going to happen next, though, and I want to talk about these discussions. There are reports as a part of the peace deal, Russia is demanding control of all of Donbass, even though much of it still remains under Ukrainian control. And Russia wants to freeze the rest of the front lines. Is that what Russia is asking for?

Sergey Lavrov: We explained during our meetings with President Trump, with other American officials, the goals of the special military operation.

Actually, we explained them to everybody publicly, but apparently NBC was not listening attentively. We have the goals which will be achieved. The goals are: to remove any security threats to Russia coming from the Ukrainian territory, to protect the rights of the ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking people who believe they belong to the Russian culture and Russian history. And the only way to protect them against this nazist regime is to give them the right to express their will. They did in 2014 in Crimea, in 2022 in the Donetsk and Lugansk Republics, and later in Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. So this is implementation of the goal of the Special Military Operation. The goal is based on respect for the United Nations Charter, which says you cannot discriminate human rights in any area, including language and religion rights, which is totally ignored by the regime.   

And then, of course, as I said, Ukraine must remain neutral, must remain out of any military blocs, and must remain non-nuclear. Those are the stepping stones in the Declaration of Independence of 1990, and those are the principles which made it possible to recognize Ukraine as an independent state.

You said let's not go into history. We don't want to forget about history, because everything which is going on now has reasons in the decades and decades, of years when the West was building NATO, was moving NATO directly on Russian borders, and was building Ukraine as an instrument to defeat Russia in the battlefield, as it were.

Question: Okay, well, speaking of history, Russia was a part of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which guaranteed Ukraine's security, but Russia violated that agreement when it invaded Ukraine in 2014. Why should Russia be trusted with Ukraine's security and the peace agreement?

Sergey Lavrov: Have you read the Budapest Memorandum?

Question: Yes. 

Sergey Lavrov: What does it say?

Question: There's a security agreement between a number of countries, including you and Ukraine, not to invade another country, and that's exactly what you did.

Sergey Lavrov: No, it seems you did not read it. The Budapest Memorandum was signed by...

Question: And Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons, Mr. Foreign Minister. That was a critical piece of it.

Sergey Lavrov: May I answer you? Ukraine gave up the nuclear weapons, exactly, and then the Memorandum guaranteed the security of Ukraine as of any other non-nuclear state. And the legal obligations of the nuclear states, when they give guarantees to non-nuclear countries, is not to attack, to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.

We never, ever signed up to providing security to Ukraine after an illegal bloody coup d'etat, which brought to power open nazists and racists, under anti-Russian slogans. When they said that, we changed our constitution, now the constitution says they would be members of NATO.

Now Zelensky, in I think January 2022, was saying that it was a mistake to reject nuclear weapons and they might think about having them again. This is not something which we guaranteed in the Budapest Memorandum.

And apart from this, the Budapest Memorandum was accompanied by a declaration by those who signed the Budapest Memorandum, which said that all participants, including Ukraine, would respect human rights, would respect the rules of OSCE, principles of OSCE, non-aggression, and so on and so forth, which was grossly violated by those who took power in Ukraine in February 2014, with the help of the United States, when Victoria Nuland proudly stated that, eventually we spent 5 billion bucks, but we achieved what we wanted. She said this after the coup. But this is history, this is history. 

Question: I should be very clear. Is the only concession Russia is offering not to invade the rest of Ukraine? Is that your concession?

Sergey Lavrov: No, we don't speak in those terms. We don't have any interest in territories. We have the biggest territory on Earth.

What we are concerned about, unlike those who raise the issue of invasion, taking more and more land, we are concerned about the people who live on those lands, whose ancestors lived there for centuries and centuries, were founding cities, were building factories, ports, developing agriculture. And these people are now called “foreigners”.

Question: But we have thousands of those people who live on those lands who have been killed by Russian bombs, Mr. Foreign Minister.

Sergey Lavrov: Look, I'm awfully sorry, but the primitivism of questions… You repeat the same and only question again and again.

And I ask you, please, kindly send me the list of those churches, the list of those kindergartens, please. And I will send you the factual information about how the Ukrainian army is fighting only civilians. I give you the example of the Kursk region. There is no military sites at all. There was also a terrorist attack on the passenger train. But you never reported this.

Question: Mr. Foreign Minister, the reality is so much of this has been captured on television. We have reporters on the ground. And I will send you a list as well, but the bottom line is the world has watched with its own eyes as people in all of these regions that have been taken over by Russian troops have been killed. With our own eyes. But let me ask you…

Sergey Lavrov: No, I remember many images saying that Ukrainian civilians are being attacked by Russians. And then these images would turn out to be taken in Iraq, 10 or 20 years ago.

So my question is, do you believe, NBC, your policy, does it provide for acceptance, the extermination by law of a language in any country?

Question: Mr. Foreign Minister, I want to just ask you, when you landed in Alaska, you were wearing a USSR sweatshirt. Were you sending a signal that Russia wants to reestablish the former Soviet Union?

Sergey Lavrov: No.

We were born in the Soviet Union. President Putin repeatedly stated that those who are not sorry what happened to the Soviet Union, they don't have a heart. But those who want to restore the Soviet Union, they don't have any brains. This is an absolutely correct statement.

We have recognized all the former Soviet Republics as independent states. We developed relations with them as fully independent states. But when countries like Ukraine begin to, you know, physically and by law exterminating everything Russian, as if, I don't know, in any country, English language would be prohibited. History would be prohibited. American history would be prohibited. This is not the case.

The Soviet Union, and if you don't remember your roots, if you don't have nostalgic, you know, memories about your childhood, about your youth, about your first love, about your friends, then I don't think you really represent humanity and human values.

To remember and to cherish what happened in your life for many years is not the same as to try to take over militarily each and every place. This is not true.

Question: Mr. Foreign Minister, final question. Does Russia, does President Putin want peace?

Sergey Lavrov: Yes.

Question: And what say you to U.S. lawmakers here who believe you are stringing along President Trump? Are you?

Sergey Lavrov: It is not for the lawmakers or for any media outlets to decide, you know, what President Trump is motivated by.

We respect President Trump because President Trump defends American national interests. And they have reason to believe that President Trump respects President Putin because he defends Russian national interests. And whatever they discuss between themselves is not, is not a secret. We want peace in Ukraine. He wants, President Trump wants peace in Ukraine.

The reaction to the Anchorage meeting, the gathering in Washington of these European representatives and what they were doing after Washington, indicates that they don't want peace. They say we cannot allow the defeat of Ukraine. We cannot allow Russia to win. They speak in these terms, win, defeat, and so on and so forth.

We proposed several times a peaceful resolution on a diplomatic basis. And as I said, it was not us who blew up the deal practically already in April 2022. It was personally Boris Johnson and it was personally several officials from the Biden administration, the French and the Germans. We know this. Anything else?

Question: Those are all of my questions. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, thank you so very much for your time.

Sergey Lavrov: Thank you very much.

Question: Hopefully next time we can see you in person.

Sergey Lavrov: Come to Moscow, but ask your people to give you some more variety of questions, you know.

And history is important because it is very tempting to use cancel culture in addressing the Ukrainian situation. Forget about the coup, as they were telling us. You must, you know, de-occupy Crimea because everything started with annexation of Crimea. We tell them, what about the coup, which was implemented against your guarantees? They say, no, this is past us. Let's concentrate on today. It's a very usual trick that people say.

Cancel culture in modern history is dangerous.

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