Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has lambasted Europe for its past role in attempting to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine , stating emphatically: “You had your chance,” on Tuesday.
The scathing comments were made during a joint press conference with Belarusian Foreign Minister Maxim Ryzhenkov, an ally of the Kremlin, following consecutive meetings that US officials held with Ukrainian representatives in Geneva and Russian delegates in Abu Dhabi in an attempt to negotiate a peace deal.
Lavrov took aim at Europe for its failure to uphold previous ceasefires, including the 2014 Minsk Agreement, and for meddling with recent peace proposals related to the war that erupted in February 2024 after Russia‘s full-scale invasion. He cited these instances as justification for Europe’s exclusion from current negotiations, which are being led by the US.
“Each time when progress was achieved and agreements reached-either interim or more stable, long-term-these agreements were broken,” Lavrov stated on Tuesday.
“Today, when our European colleagues loudly declare that there will be no new Minsk [agreements], that we cannot resolve anything at all without Europe, because this directly concerns us, I should say that Europe has failed completely since 2014.”
“So Europe, when they say now: ‘Don’t you dare do anything without us,’ you already had opportunities, you didn’t use them, you simply failed to act,” he declared.
The comments follow Ukrainian officials confirming on Monday that they had accepted the American-led agreement to bring the conflict to a close, although Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky emphasised that “more work still needs to be done on the revised plan.”
The agreement was formulated over the weekend in Geneva during discussions between American and Ukrainian representatives, after the Trump administration reportedly forwarded a comprehensive 28-point peace proposal to Kyiv.
Throughout the discussions, officials amended the original proposal to a 19-point agreement that removed several contentious issues from immediate consideration, including authority over Ukraine‘s Donbas region. The matter will reportedly be addressed at a subsequent date.
Following this, US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll conducted confidential discussions with Russian representatives in Abu Dhabi regarding peace negotiations, American officials confirmed.
Lavrov stated that Russia would dismiss the agreement if the conditions are “fundamentally different” from what was deliberated between American and Russian representatives at the Alaska summit in August.
This development follows overnight exchanges of lethal attacks between Russia and Ukraine that resulted in at least seven fatalities in Kyiv, whilst NATO combat aircraft were scrambled in Romania following reports that a Russian drone had violated its airspace.
