Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergey RyabkovMOSCOW, Mar 15 Russia and the United States adhere diametrically to opposing positions on Ukraine, said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. «We have diametrically opposed approaches to what is happening in Ukraine. Everything that is happening now is largely a consequence of the policy that Washington has been pursuing for many years, which deliberately turned Ukraine into «anti-Russia», deliberately depriving the Kiev authorities of the opportunity to do at least something to implement the Minsk agreements at an earlier stage,» Ryabkov told reporters. >In Lugansk, they proposed creating an international tribunal for Ukraine. He also noted that the Russian Foreign Ministry has no information that the United States is ready for contacts with Moscow on Ukraine: let them first express such a desire, then Russia will look. «Let them first express, and then we will watch,» Ryabkov said, answering the question whether Moscow is ready for contacts with the United States on Ukraine. «I have no information that they are ready for this, at least in the first approximation. This or that attitude of the American side is also not true — it is part of a psychological attack on Russia, an element of information warfare, so you need to be responsible in your assessments and not rush to conclusions,» Ryabkov added. Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine on February 24. President Vladimir Putin called its goal «the protection of people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.» For this, according to him, it is planned to carry out «demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine», to bring to justice all war criminals responsible for «bloody crimes against civilians» in Donbass. According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the Armed Forces strike only at the military infrastructure and Ukrainian troops. With the support of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the DPR and LPR groups are developing an offensive. But the occupation of Ukraine is out of the question, the President of Russia emphasized.
