The face-to-face meeting between the foreign ministers of Ukraine and Russia was basically a depressing repetition of two conflicting narratives. But at the same time, it was very revealing, given the manifestations of the Russian siege mentality and Moscow's extraordinary ability to call objective truth "

The Guardian writes about this, adding that the meeting is also worthy of attention because Kyiv began to develop an argument about its readiness for an alternative to NATO membership, provided that Ukraine receives security and economic guarantees from the West and Russia.. Kuleba, in an interview with the Turkish TV channel TRT, said that Ukraine is not yet ready to give up the opportunity to join the alliance.. However, I am ready to consider such guarantees as an alternative or an intermediate stage on the way to NATO.

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President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky admitted that he has " Lavrov said the words " But it's hard to imagine what credible security guarantees Moscow can give to any Western government.. Since at the beginning of his press conference, Lavrov said that Russia "

A little later, Lavrov justified the bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol, saying that Russia had warned the UN days before that the hospital was allegedly taken over by fighters from the Azov Battalion..

“All mothers who were supposed to give birth were expelled from there. This is not the first time we have seen such pathetic complaints about so-called atrocities by the Russian military.. Unfortunately, the other side never paid attention to this,” Lavrov said..

He became indignant when Western journalists, whom he called state propagandists, tried to point him to a photo of murdered children in a Mariupol maternity hospital..

“Oh, this is the third time I have to talk about this maternity hospital and children's hospital. And you just don't listen. And no one will say that three days ago at the UN Security Council we explained what happened to this maternity hospital, ”the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed.

Lavrov showed an unexpected desire to accelerate the disconnection of the Russian economy from the West. According to him, Vladimir Putin will take care of the Russian economy so that “all sorts of uncles Sema” do not destroy it.. “This should have been done a long time ago,” he added, implicitly acknowledging Russian failure to prepare for the inevitable Western sanctions imposed over the past two weeks..

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Kuleba, for his part, said that he had the impression that Lavrov did not come to negotiate important issues, such as a truce for 24 hours.. And those who really make the decision are left somewhere else. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu called the meeting an "

“But it was noticeable that Lavrov played the role of a propagandist rather than a negotiator more happily, voicing various Russian conspiracy theories about Ukraine allegedly planning to build a new Nazi state, banning the Russian language and the Orthodox Church, about the covert deployment of US biological weapons in Ukraine? and also about the secret plans of the Ukrainian attack on Russia, which were allegedly disclosed,” the newspaper writes..

“It’s hard to say that Lavrov, who has been in office for several decades, really believes in all these hermetically sealed Russian fables about peace.. But they make him a relentless conversationalist,” adds The Guardian.