BERLIN, Feb 7 Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Andriy Melnyk claims that Kyiv would like peace talks, while, in his opinion, Moscow is not ready for them and needs to be «pushed» to this by new arms supplies to Ukraine.
Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in an interview with the Rossiya 24 TV channel and the agency, said that the thesis that Russia refuses to negotiate on Ukraine is a lie, Moscow will continue to refute this and other fakes. According to him, no one is trying to convince Kyiv of the need to return to negotiations with Moscow.
«We already want peace today, but Putin does not seem ready, and therefore we need weapons to push him towards it,» Melnik said on the air of the second German channel ZDF.
According to him, «it takes two to dance», and two are also needed for peace negotiations. «At the moment, unfortunately, the Russians are not ready,» the Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine concluded.
Earlier, Russia sent a note to NATO countries over arms supplies to Ukraine. Lavrov noted that any cargo that contains weapons for Ukraine would become a legitimate target for Russia. The Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation stated that the NATO countries are «playing with fire» by supplying weapons to Ukraine. Press Secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov noted that pumping Ukraine with weapons from the West does not contribute to the success of Russian-Ukrainian negotiations and will have a negative effect.