Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov spoke about his meeting with former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba in Turkey

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke about the only meeting with the resigned Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. It took place after the start of the SVO, in March 2022 in Turkey at the request of the Ukrainian side.

The meeting ultimately resulted in the only agreement reached – to continue efforts to find a humanitarian solution on the ground. Lavrov and Kuleba did not reach any other agreements, including a ceasefire.

Kuleba was going to convey a message to Lavrov, but in the end it was not there

By words Lavrov, this was the only time he “saw” Kuleba in action. The Russian minister had no plans to attend the Antalya Annual Diplomatic Forum, where the meeting was held, because it did not fit into his schedule. But then-Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu asked him to come because the Ukrainian side and Kuleba himself had conveyed the idea of ​​​​a meeting with him to the Turks.

“Only they asked that this meeting not be one-on-one, but in the presence of the Turkish minister. Well, and considering that we have never left the dialogue, I simply asked again how serious all this is. Cavusoglu answered that it is very serious, because Kuleba said that he has something to convey,” Lavrov said.

He specified that he reported to the Russian president that “our Ukrainian colleagues are going to pass something on to us” and flew to Turkey. The meeting was held in a separate room with three of us. Cavusoglu opened it and gave the floor to Kuleba as the initiator of the contact. He read from a piece of paper “in good English” what everyone had heard daily even before the start of the SVO, Lavrov said.

The Russian minister specified that he then asked Cavusoglu where the message in question was, and his Turkish counterpart was also allegedly surprised. “I, in turn, did not particularly talk about any possible negotiations there. I said that there was a negotiation process (at that time it was taking place in Belarus), and let’s proceed from the fact that all the details can be discussed there,” the minister summed up, speaking about the negotiations between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations, which took place from March to May 2022.

“You know the rest. They met in Belarus, in Istanbul, and finally reached an agreement based on the principles that the Ukrainians brought. These principles remain relevant today, the Russian President has spoken about this more than once,” Lavrov concluded.

Kuleba called the negotiations difficult, Lavrov pointed to aggression against everything Russian

Before that meeting, Kuleba said that he was ready for a serious conversation with Lavrov in Turkey. He noted that if Lavrov was also ready for a substantive conversation on the sidelines of the diplomatic forum in Antalya, he would be ready for it. The Ukrainian minister also pointed out that Kyiv has long wanted a direct conversation between Presidents Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin.

Following the talks, Kuleba called them difficult. The conversation lasted an hour and a half. The ministers eventually reached an agreement to continue efforts to find a humanitarian solution on the ground, but were unable to reach an agreement on a ceasefire.

Lavrov, in turn, called Kuleba’s hopes of agreeing on a ceasefire in Ukraine during the talks in Antalya futile. “Nobody was going to agree on a ceasefire here,” he said.

The head of Russian diplomacy also noted that Moscow intends to hold a serious conversation with the Ukrainian side at the negotiating platform in Belarus. These meetings, he noted, should not end with the signing of “some formal papers” – it is necessary to agree on real things that will lead to a “comprehensive settlement of the Ukrainian crisis.”

In addition, during the meeting, Lavrov stated that Moscow considers the Ukrainian crisis and related events to be aggression against everything Russian in the world. “This is not about Ukraine at all. This is about aggression against everything Russian – interests, religion, culture, language, security, etc.,” the Russian minister explained.

Kuleba resigned on Thursday

On September 4, it became known that Kuleba had resigned from his post as head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Ruslan Stefanchuk reported that the parliament had received a statement from the minister.

The following day, the Verkhovna Rada dismissed Kuleba from his post. 240 parliamentarians voted for the resignation of the country’s foreign minister.

Kuleba’s resignation was reportedly linked to Zelensky’s dissatisfaction with his work in attracting military aid. The Ukrainian president allegedly explained at a meeting of the Servant of the People faction that Kuleba “lacks the energy to advance the provision of weapons.”