MOSCOW: French officials sometimes signal that they want to bury the hatchet with Russia, but they do so very discreetly, "in a whis...
MOSCOW: French officials sometimes signal that they want to bury the hatchet with Russia, but they do so very discreetly, "in a whisper," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during a ceremony bestowing Emmanuel Quidet, President of the Franco-Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, with the Order of Friendship.
"Sometimes our French colleagues send us signals that they want to find a way to resolve the problems that have arisen, but they just barely whisper them," Lavrov stated.
He criticized what he described as a "false and crude primitive explanation" of the Ukraine conflict being promoted in French society. "This morning, while leafing through Kommersant, I came across an interview with [French Ambassador to Russia] Nicolas de Riviere, whom I have known for many years. He came here after serving as France's permanent representative to the UN," Lavrov said.
"The article says, in a peremptory way, that all the problems stem from the fact that Russia has ‘attacked France.’ It does not mention a single word about the warnings that President Vladimir Putin and other senior officials have been issuing to the West for a decade - warnings against NATO's expansion eastward and the fostering of an openly Nazi regime in Ukraine following the coup."
Lavrov further noted the article failed to acknowledge France’s role in the events of 2014. "France played one of the leading roles in guiding the Ukrainian people to disaster," he said. "It was this country that in February 2014 served as a guarantor of the initial settlement agreements," Lavrov pointed out. "The next morning, the opposition spat on those who guaranteed them, did nothing to enlighten them and bring them back to the trampled agreements. The leaders of the coup, declaring that they were creating a 'victorious government' in Ukraine, announced that the abolition of the Russian language would be their main priority. And the democratic leadership in Paris kept silent," Lavrov concluded.
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