Russian foreign minister ridicules Ukrainian peace plan at United Nations

Russia’s foreign minister panned a Ukrainian peace plan at the United Nations over the weekend, saying the war would have to be settled “on the battlefield” if more “realistic” terms couldn’t be offered.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called Ukraine’s 10-point peace plan “completely not feasible” at a press conference following an address at the General Assembly Saturday, insisting “it is not possible to implement this.”

“It’s not realistic and everybody understands this, but at the same time, they say this is the only basis for negotiations,” Lavrov said.

The plan was first proposed by President Volodymyr Zelensky in October 2022 and calls for the return of Ukrainian territory dating back to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Also included in the peace plan was a tribunal for the prosecution of Russian war crimes, national food security through the protection of much-contested black sea trade routes, and several other measures including the safe return of a nuclear power plant, along with an official end to the war.

Without an altered agreement, Lavrov said Russia had no option for resolution beyond continuing hostilities.

“If you insist on the battlefield, okay, let’s decide it on the battlefield,” he said.

Lavrov also criticized the United States and its Western allies, accusing them of actively waging war against Russia with Ukrainian forces.

The US, he said, was “effectively engaged in hostilities with us, using the Ukrainians as fodder.”

“You can call this whatever you want to call this, but they are directly at war with us,” he said. “We call this a hybrid war. But that doesn’t change the reality.”

During his address before the General Assembly earlier in the day — delivered before a half-empty room — Lavros blamed the US and allies for starting and prolonging the war for their own interests.

“The US and its subordinate Western collective are continuing to fuel conflicts which artificially divide humanity into hostile blocks and hamper the achievement of overall aims. They’re doing everything they can to prevent the formation of a genuine multipolar world order,” he said.

“They are trying to force the world to play according to their own self-centered rule.”

Beyond that, he said little to address the current fighting in Ukraine.

Lavrov did not meet with Zelensky as world leaders came together at a UN week which heard both the Ukrainian president and US President Joe Biden harshly rebuke Russia in separate speeches.

As Russia finds itself increasingly isolated on the world stage, officials in the country are continuing to clamp down on public dissent in the country.

Outspoken Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr., 42, was transferred to a maximum-security prison in Siberia Thursday, where he was placed in a small “punishment cell,” his attorney reported.

The journalist was sentenced to 25 years in prison earlier this year after being imprisoned in 2022 for publicly condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in an address to the Arizona House of Representatives.

With Post wires.