Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov asserted that the Black Sea Grain Initiative allowing safe passage for Ukrainian exports will not be revived and castigated Ukraine’s proposed 10-point peace plan, calling both “not realistic.”
Lavrov addressed the United Nations General Assembly at the annual gathering of world leaders at U.N. headquarters in New York. In a week of global diplomacy, Ukraine .
“It is completely not feasible,” Lavrov said of the peace plan initiated by Kyiv. “It is not possible to implement this. It’s not realistic and everybody understands this, but at the same time, they say this is the only basis for negotiations.”
Lavrov said the conflict would be resolved on the battlefield if Kyiv and the West persisted in that position.
Lavrov also said Moscow left the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which had allowed the safe passage of Ukrainian agricultural exports, because promises made to Russia had not been fulfilled.
He said the latest U.N. proposals to revive that export corridor also were “simply not realistic.”
Lavrov also lashed out at “the U.S. and its subordinate Western collective,” for stoking conflicts “which artificially divide humanity into hostile blocks and hamper the achievement of overall aims. They’re doing everything they can to prevent the formation of a genuine multipolar world order,” he said.
Lavrov addressed the U.N. General Assembly four days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and U.S. President Joe Biden