MOSCOW, July 7. /TASS/. Moscow will base its position only on what the Ukrainian leadership is actually doing, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
"It [the Kiev regime] may just as well say something opposite tomorrow. We will look at concrete actions and judge by them," he said in an interview with VGTRK journalist Pavel Zarubin, commenting on the changing tone of Kiev’s statements. "We’d better not build our policy on what they say but determine our actions by the tasks set within the special military operation."
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said earlier that he doesn’t want the conflict to be protracted and plans to articulate his plan for ending it before the end of the current year. Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov stressed that Russia is open to any dialogue on Ukraine, including via mediators, but will implement its goals in any event.
Ukrainian presidential office adviser Mikhail Podolyak said that Ukraine could hand over its peace proposals to Russia via third-country mediators. He stressed however that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who visited Kiev and Moscow earlier this week, cannot act as such a mediator.
On June 14, Russian President Vladimir Putin put forward a new peace proposal on settling the conflict in Ukraine. Thus, Russia insists that the status of Crimea, the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as the Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions be recognized, Ukraine declare its off-bloc and non-nuclear status, be demilitarized and de-Nazified, and anti-Russian sanctions be lifted. Putin warned that is Ukraine and the West reject these terms, they may change in the future. Kiev turned this proposal down.
Russia has repeatedly stressed that the so-called Ukrainian peace formula is unacceptable. Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov noted later that Kiev’s statements on peaceful settlement don’t take into account the current realities.