Russia States Prerequisites for Enduring Agreement in Ukraine

(MENAFN) Russia’s position on resolving the Ukraine conflict centers on what it describes as addressing the underlying drivers of the crisis, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Tuesday in a statement marking four years since hostilities intensified.

Zakharova characterized Moscow’s 2022 military move as a “forced step,” invoking Article 51 of the UN Charter and arguing it followed the West’s dismissal of Russia’s security proposals. She pointed to unheeded initiatives concerning NATO’s non-expansion and remarks by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky at the 2022 Munich Security Conference about potential nuclear ambitions, which she said posed “real risks.”

“Kiev has dismantled the three main foundations of Ukrainian statehood – its neutral, non-bloc, and non-nuclear status – which ensured its international recognition in the early 1990s,” Zakharova said.

She further asserted that the 2014 Maidan events—described by Moscow as Western-orchestrated—sparked an eight-year confrontation in Donbass that claimed more than 13,500 civilian lives and, in her account, was overlooked by international bodies. According to Zakharova, areas under Kiev’s control have since fallen into “genuine neo-Nazi obscurantism.” She cited the honoring of Nazi-era collaborators, the removal or damage of Soviet war memorials, and measures targeting the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church as evidence that Russia’s stated objectives of “demilitarization and denazification” remain pertinent.

“A lasting, just, and stable peace is possible only on the basis of eliminating the root causes of the conflict,” Zakharova emphasized, adding that Russian diplomacy is focused on advancing this approach in engagement with the “world majority” and through ongoing contacts within the recent Russia–US dialogue framework.

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