Tue 27 December 2022:
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has issued an ultimatum to Ukraine: either accept Moscow’s demands, which include surrendering Ukrainian territory that it now occupies, or let the Russian army decide Ukraine’s future.
Speaking a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated his willingness to engage in peace negotiations, a statement that the United States has criticized as being disingenuous, Lavrov advised Kyiv to agree with Moscow’s demands for its “own good.”
“Our proposals for the demilitarisation and denazification of the territories controlled by the regime, the elimination of threats to Russia’s security emanating from there, including our new lands, are well known to the enemy,” state news agency TASS quoted Lavrov as saying late on Monday.
“The point is simple: Fulfil them for your own good. Otherwise, the issue will be decided by the Russian army,” Lavrov said.
Asked by TASS how long the conflict will last, Lavrov said: “The ball is in the regime’s court and Washington behind it.”
Downfall Of Western Economic Leadership
Earlier on Monday Lavrov said, that the West was bound to lose its leading role in the global economic hierarchy.
“The revision of risks and threats stemming from such dependence (on the Western leadership) is progressing rapidly. I assure you that we will soon see the West’s capacity to steer the global economy shrink drastically,” he told Russian media in Moscow.
Lavrov said that many countries were increasingly disillusioned with the West after initially seeing the “instruments and mechanisms” at its disposal as promoting a global balance of interests. Russia, in particular, came to distrust the West after the recent breakdown in bilateral ties.
“We will not be running after the West after it severed almost all ties.
.. We will seek out those who have never let us down and with whom we had to make difficult compromises in the past but once we agreed on something they never failed us,” he said.
Lavrov argued that the Biden administration was bent on universalizing its vision of Western liberal democracy, as described by American political scientist Francis Fukuyama in his 1992 book, “The End of History and the Last Man.”
“American envoys demand that every country take a tough stance on Russia, join the sanctions and stop dealing with Russian representatives. It is all part of this plan to bring about the end of history by ensuring the final and irreversible dominance of the so-called golden billion,” he said.
“Difficult and painful”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on Monday that the situation at the front in the Donbas region was “difficult and painful” and required all of the country’s “strength and concentration”. He said that as a result of Russia’s targeting of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, nearly nine million people were now without electricity. That figure amounts to about a quarter of Ukraine’s population.
Tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians have also been killed in cities Russia razed to the ground, and thousands of troops on both sides have died.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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