Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who is on a tour of Africa, said on Tuesday that the West is “supporting genocide” in Ukraine by backing President Volodymyr Zelenskyi’s peace plan, which he said will “destroy everything Russian” in eastern Ukraine and Crimea , Reuters and News.ro report.

Russia has long accused the West of ignoring what it says is the persecution of Russian-speaking people in eastern Donbas and elsewhere.

“The conclusion is very simple – the West directly supports genocide,” Lavrov said during a press conference with his Burundian counterpart.

Zelensky’s peace plan calls for the withdrawal of Russian troops from the entire territory of Ukraine, including the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed by force in 2014.

Speaking on a day when Russia accused Ukraine of carrying out the largest-ever drone attack on Moscow, Lavrov said the West was directly helping Kiev carry out such “terrorist” attacks by supplying it with weapons and military equipment. “The West’s statement that the weapons they supply (to Ukraine) should not be used against the territory of the Russian Federation is another lie,” he said.

Lavrov also criticized US Senator Lindsey Graham’s comments, saying they could be interpreted as encouraging the killing of Russians.

In a redacted video released last Friday by Zelenskyi’s office, Graham said during a meeting with the Ukrainian president in Kyiv that “Russians are dying” and that US support represented “the best money they’ve ever spent” by the United States.

After Russia criticized the remarks, Ukraine released the full video of the meeting on Sunday, showing that the two remarks were not directly related. For his part, Graham noted that he simply praised the spirit of Ukrainians to resist the Russian invasion with the assistance of Washington.

Read also: Russia monitored US Senator Lindsey Graham

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