Lavrov insists goals in Ukraine unchanged

Skopje: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday his government was not prepared to “review its goals” in Ukraine delivering a blunt and confrontational message to Western leaders on a rare trip to a NATO member state.

“We aren’t seeing any signals from Kyiv or its masters about their readiness to seek any kind of political settlement,” Lavrov told reporters while attending a security conference in North Macedonia. “We see no reason to review our goals,” he said.

North Macedonia, which joined NATO in 2020, waived a flight ban on Russian officials so that Lavrov could attend the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, prompting the foreign ministers of Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to skip the meeting in protest.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a brief stop in North Macedonia’s capital.