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SKOPJE, 1 Dec: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday his government was not prepared to \u201creview its goals\u201d in Ukraine \u2014 delivering a blunt and confrontational message to Western leaders on a rare trip to a NATO member state.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe aren\u2019t seeing any signals from Kyiv or its masters about their readiness to seek any kind of political settlement,\u201d Lavrov told reporters while attending a security conference in North Macedonia.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe see no reason to review our goals,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
North Macedonia, which joined NATO in 2020, waived a flight ban on Russian officials so that Lavrov could attend the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, prompting the foreign ministers of Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to skip the meeting in protest.<\/p>\n
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a brief stop in North Macedonia\u2019s capital of Skopje before Lavrov arrived.<\/p>\n
Participants at the two-day conference accused Moscow of undermining the OSCE. The Vienna, Austria-based organization \u2014 originally created to ease Cold War tensions \u2014 includes countries from North America, Europe and the former Soviet Union.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is Russia that is waging an unprovoked and unlawful war against Ukraine, and it is Russia that is obstructing the OSCE agenda,\u201d Katrina Kaktina, Latvia\u2019s representative at the organization said Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cRussia is continuing violations of human rights: deliberate killings of civilians, including children, forced deportations, tactics of torture and sexual violence. Those are war crimes being committed by Russia in Ukraine,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Speaking at a news conference in Skopje, Lavrov accused Western countries of showing cowardice by refusing to meet with him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey probably want to emphasize their intention to isolate Russia but I think they just chickened out,\u201d Lavrov said during the briefing that lasted over an hour.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re afraid of any honest conversation,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s cowardice, simple cowardice.\u201d<\/p>\n
While in Skopje, Lavrov held several bilateral meetings including talks with the foreign ministers of Armenia and North Macedonia as well as with Peter Szijjarto, the foreign minister of Hungary which has maintained close ties with Moscow despite European Union sanctions. ___ Gatopoulos reported from Athens. (AP)<\/p>\n
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SKOPJE, 1 Dec: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday his government was not prepared to \u201creview its goals\u201d in Ukraine \u2014 delivering a blunt and confrontational message to Western leaders on a rare trip to a NATO member state. \u201cWe aren\u2019t seeing any signals from Kyiv or its masters about their readiness to seek […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-229751","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229751\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}