Moscow: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday called for clarity on the role the US intends to play in resolving the conflict in Ukraine following US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s comments on the outcomes of the Anchorage summit.
“Of course, this whole situation needs to be clarified. But the fact remains: US proposals were discussed in Alaska, and they were accepted by the Russian side,” Lavrov said in a statement.
On Thursday, Rubio said that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump did not reach any final agreements on Ukraine during their meeting in Anchorage, Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency reported.
“There was no agreement in Alaska. There was a proposal in Alaska, but there was no agreement in Alaska. If there had been an agreement, we would have had an end to the war,” Rubio told journalists in Bahrain during his state visit.
He made the remarks after Lavrov’s statement on Wednesday that the US has still not responded to its own proposals for a Ukrainian settlement made in Alaska’s Anchorage, media reports said.
In his remarks at the Primakov Readings international scientific and expert forum, Lavrov said Russia was given “absolutely concrete proposals” before the Russia-US Summit in Alaska, which were accepted by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian news agency Tass reported.
“We thought we had reached an agreement there. But a week passes, then two. President (of the United States Donald) Trump went to Washington to consult with the Europeans. (Volodymyr) Zelenskyy was also consulted there somehow. But in the end, we still don’t have a response to the American proposal, which we supported,” Lavrov said. “That’s how the situation looks now.”
The Russian Foreign Minister said the understandings reached in Alaska “were already a compromise”.
On Friday, Lavrov said: “When my colleague Marco Rubio says that in Alaska there were only proposals, but no agreement, this raises questions for me in terms of what we mean by agreement. If one side, in this case the United States, put its proposals for a settlement on the table, for how to approach this crisis, and the other side expressed agreement with these proposals, then saying there was no agreement is somehow not very elegant.”
(IANS)
