Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday during a visit to Brazil that Moscow wants the conflict in Ukraine to end as soon as possible, Reuters and Agerpres reported.

At a press conference in Brasilia with his Brazilian colleague Mauro Vieira, Lavrov thanked Brazil for “understanding the genesis of the situation in Ukraine” and stated that Russia is “interested” in ending this conflict as soon as possible.

Russia has repeatedly stated that any settlement of the conflict must recognize the “reality” of its unilateral annexation of four Ukrainian regions, which its armed forces partially control.

“We need to resolve the conflict in a sustainable way, not immediately,” but neither Western countries nor NATO “are contributing” to this, the head of Russian diplomacy also said on Monday.

Lavrov accused the United States and Europe of “failing to fulfill the commitments they made many years ago,” apparently alluding to the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015 that ended the conflict in eastern Ukraine, but which the country’s current president, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, qualifies today as “concessions”, reports EFE.

Russia says it had no choice to invade Ukraine

In a new justification for the invasion he launched last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in January this year that Russia should have intervened in Ukraine last February to protect Russian-speaking citizens from persecution and prevent the West from using Ukraine to threaten Russia’s security.

Kyiv and the West consider this to be a baseless pretext for a war of aggression, in which thousands of people died and Ukrainian cities were devastated.

The Russian minister has repeatedly argued that a resolution to the current hostilities must be “long-lasting” rather than “immediate,” and while he welcomed Brazil’s proposal to try to create a group of countries to facilitate negotiations, he was not very open to the possibility. .

Brazil is the first stage of the tour of the head of Russian diplomacy, which will continue in the coming days with visits to Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, countries that maintain close economic and political relations with Russia.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said a few days ago, before Lavrov’s arrival, that the US should stop “encouraging” the war in Ukraine.

“The United States must stop promoting war and start talking about peace, the European Union must start talking about peace,” Lula told reporters in Beijing on Saturday during his official visit to China.

In this way, the international community will be able to “convince” Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky that “peace is in the interests of the whole world,” he added.

Follow the latest events of the 418th day of the war in Ukraine LIVETEXT on HOTNEWS.RO.