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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that he does not expect any changes in US policy towards Russia and Ukraine after Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election. According to Lavrov, regardless of who is in charge in Washington, the United States consistently seeks to weaken Moscow’s influence in the international arena, dpareports.
“Washington feels comfortable when it weakens Russia and reduces its influence,” Lavrov said in a commentary for state television. He added that the US, in his opinion, supports the war in Ukraine mainly to weaken Moscow, stressing that “Washington will always try to keep everything under its control”.
During the election campaign, Donald Trump stated his desire to end the conflict in Ukraine through a peace agreement with Russia, but the details of such an agreement remain unknown. Following the announcement of the election results, Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Trump and expressed readiness for dialogue, although he noted that the nature of the new US administration’s decisions remained to be seen.
In addition, Lavrov spoke out against freezing the war in Ukraine and returning to the Minsk agreements, which previously offered a settlement to the conflict in the Donbas region. Lavrov stressed that these agreements, signed in 2014 and 2015 with the mediation of Germany and France, provided for autonomy for Ukraine’s eastern regions, which Kyiv does not support.
As a reminder, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, officially calling it a “special military operation” to “denazify” and “demilitarise” Ukraine. The conflict has already become the largest armed confrontation on the European continent since World War II.
