The Russian Foreign Minister has held dozens of meetings on the sidelines of the UNGA including one with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Saturday delivered an address to the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, as well as held a major press conference after it. The top diplomat spoke about the Ukrainian conflict, the enduring hostilities in Gaza, the ongoing drone scare in the EU, and a broad range of other issues.
Lavrov has held more than 35 meetings on the sidelines of the UNGA over the past three days, including one with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. During the talks, both agreed to maintain contact on a wide range of issues.
They also reaffirmed the importance of the “momentum” generated by the Alaska summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump in “normalizing bilateral relations,” the Foreign Ministry in Moscow relayed.
The Russian delegation’s visit comes on the heels of a sharp change in Trump’s rhetoric on the Ukraine conflict following his meeting with Vladimir Zelensky earlier this week. In a Truth Social post on Tuesday, the US president said he believes Kiev is “in a position to fight and win all of Ukraine back,” with enough support from the EU and NATO.
For months before that, Trump and his administration had argued that Ukraine would need to relinquish some of its territorial claims in order to secure a US-brokered peace deal.
Unlike his predecessor, Joe Biden, Trump has resisted sending large amounts of direct US military aid to Kiev and has instead urged European NATO members to buy American weapons for Ukraine’s forces.
Throughout the conflict, Moscow has stressed that it is open to a peaceful settlement, as long as it includes a Ukrainian commitment to neutrality, demilitarization, denazification, and acceptance of the new territorial realities.
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- 27 September 202520:00 GMTCommenting on Lavrov’s speech at the UNGA, former UN independent expert on international order, Alfred de Zayas, has told RT that Ukraine won’t be able to defeat Russia.
- “Everybody knows […] that the war in Ukraine goes back to the unconstitutional coup d’etat against the democratically elected president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, in 2014,” de Zayas stressed. Since then, Moscow has repeatedly stressed the unacceptability of Kiev’s attitude towards its Russian population and proposed several peace projects, including to NATO.According to him, Kiev “would have been well advised to accept” those suggestions.”It is a great tragedy for everybody that Ukraine had this illusion or delusion that it could defeat Russia and that NATO was convinced that they could have weakened Russia,” he added.In his press conference after the UNGA speech, Lavrov said that Ukraine would not be able to take back any territory now that it has refused peace proposals, including those by the US.
- 19:59 GMTRussia is very alarmed about US military activity near Venezuela’s territorial waters, Lavrov has stated during his press conference. He affirmed that Moscow “stands in solidarity with both the people and the government of Venezuela.”“They have every right to determine their political, economic, and social path. And we believe that interfering in their internal affairs is just as unacceptable as interfering in the internal affairs of any other country,” the minister emphasized.
- 19:37 GMTThe range of the drones whose wreckage was found in Poland is shorter than the distance from the Russian border to that country, Lavrov stated during a press conference at the UN.He recalled that at the time of the incident, the Russian Ministry of Defense had proposed a meeting with Poland to resolve the situation by examining the wreckage and assessing its range. “The drones that were allegedly discovered on Polish territory, if they are the ones we are considering, then their range is shorter than the distance from the Russian border to the Polish border,” Lavrov noted.Warsaw responded to a series of airspace violations by unarmed UAVs on the 9 September by scrambling NATO jets and accusing Russia of being behind the incident – an allegation Moscow has strenuously denied.
- 19:19 GMTLavrov’s press conference at the UN was guarded by a German Shepherd, “who barked encouragingly,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said in a Telegram post.
- 18:56 GMTRussia never had any intention of attacking NATO or the European Union, Lavrov said. “However, any aggression against my country will be decisively rebuffed. There should be no doubt about that,” he declared.
- 18:47 GMTThe Russian foreign minister has announced that he and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio have agreed to hold a third round of consultations on “irritants” in bilateral relations this fall.He was referring to visa issues, embassy operations, Russian property, and “other aspects of the day-to-day functioning of our diplomatic missions,” Lavrov said.
- 18:44 GMTMoscow and Washington are ready for frank dialogue, Lavrov has claimed.
- 18:36 GMTRussia believes there is no justification either for the brutal killings of the civilian population of Palestine or for terrorist attacks against Israel, Lavrov stressed during his UNGA speech.“There is also no justification for the collective punishment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where Palestinian children are dying from bombing and starvation. Hospitals and schools are being destroyed and hundreds of thousands of people are being left without shelter,” he said.
- 18:30 GMT“There is no justification for plans to annex the West Bank. We are essentially dealing with an attempt at a kind of coup d’état aimed at burying UN decisions on the creation of a Palestinian state.”
- 18:29 GMTRussian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has drawn attention to an incident during Lavrov’s speech at UNGA, where General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock’s microphone was cut off while announcing “Russia.”“Either Baerbock’s microphone was cut off when she said ‘Russian Federation’, or she did it herself. It would be a good idea for the UN Secretariat to figure out what’s going on at the General Assembly under the aforementioned presidency,” Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel.
Credit RT News