'No long-term agreement without security for Russian interests': Lavrov doubles down on Putin's demands

Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has ruled out any long-term agreement about the war in Ukraine until Russian maximalist demands are met.

Lavrov on Tuesday said that there cannot be any long-term settlement without addressing “Russia’s security interests”.

“Without respect for Russia’s security interests, rights of Russians and Russian-speaking people living in Ukraine, there can be no talk of any long-term agreements,” Lavrov told Russian state media.

Lavrov further falsely claimed that Ukraine has banned the Russian language. He justified the war on Ukraine as a response to the purported plight of the Russian-speakers.

Lavrov further said that Russia never set the objective of seizing any territory — even though Russia has annexed four Ukrainian provinces since 2022 and annexed the fifth, Crimea, in 2014.

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The purported mistreatment of Russian-speakers in Ukraine’s eastern region of Donbas has been one of the justifications of Russian invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and then 2022. Russian leader Vladimir Putin referred to the purported mistreatment in his speech announcing the full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, and said “the purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime”.

Putin further said, “We had to stop that atrocity, that genocide of the millions of people who live there and who pinned their hopes on Russia, on all of us.”

Russian maximalist terms over language, culture

The ‘root causes’ of the conflict , a euphemism for their maximalist demands, that Putin and his lieutenants have referred to throughout the conflict have also included these demands.

In terms conveyed to Ukraine in Istanbul talks in June , Russia sought the declaration of Russian as an official language in Ukraine. Currently, only Ukrainian is the official language in the country.

Russia further sought the restoration of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), which was banned over its ties to Russia. The UOC-MP is the Ukrainian branch of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), which has been a staunch ally of Putin since his political rise in the 1990s.

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The UOC-MP was banned under a law enacted last year that outlawed religious organisations that are subordinate to organisations in countries engaged in armed aggression against Ukraine — specifically targeting the ROC and its Ukrainian branches.

While Putin has dubbed such demands as the protection of Russian-speakers, Ukraine has seen such demands as a ploy to dilute and reshape the Ukrainian national identity. In demands previously conveyed to Ukraine, Russia had also sought amendments to Ukrainian constitution for the “denazification” of the country. In terms conveyed in June, Russia sought the ban on Ukrainian ’nationalist formations'.