Reuters – July 12, 2023

The armed confrontation in Ukraine will continue until the West gives up plans to dominate and defeat Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with an Indonesian newspaper published on Wednesday.

The goal of the “US-led collective West” is to strengthen its global hegemony, Lavrov told the Kompas newspaper. Lavrov is due to attend the East Asia Summit and ASEAN Regional Forum in Jakarta this week, as is U.S. Secretary of State

“Why doesn’t the armed confrontation in Ukraine come to an end? The answer is very simple – it will continue until the West gives up its plans to preserve its domination and overcome its obsessive desire to inflict on Russia a strategic defeat at the hands of its Kiev puppets,” according to a transcript of the interview published on Russia’s foreign ministry website.

“For the time being, there are no signs of change in this position.”

Russia waged a full-scale invasion in Ukraine in February 2022, calling it a “special military operation” to denazify its neighbour. Kyiv and its allies call the war, now in its 17th month, an aggression to grab land.

On Wednesday, Russia launched a wave of kamikaze drone attacks on Kyiv for a second night in row and hours before President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was due to meet NATO leaders at a summit in Vilnius.

The West says it wants to help Ukraine win its conflict with Russia, and Western powers have supplied large amounts of modern arms and ammunition to Kyiv.

Lavrov also accused Kyiv of ignoring Indonesia’s peace plan and instead promoting its own “package of ultimatums.”

Ukraine dismissed the Indonesian plan, a multi-point formula which had included a call for the establishment of a demilitarised zone, reiterating Kyiv’s position that Russia should withdraw its troops from Ukraine.

Commenting on the internal strife in Myanmar since a military coup in 2021, Lavrov urged the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to resolve issues with “close cooperation” with the junta and without interfering in Myanmar’s domestic affairs.

ASEAN foreign ministers meeting on Tuesday were expected to address the growing violence in Myanmar. The regional bloc has barred the junta from its summits for failing to implement an agreed peace plan.

(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne and Ananda Teresia in Jakarta; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

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