Excerpts from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s statement at a high-level plenary meeting of the International Conference

Excerpts from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s statement at a high-level plenary meeting of the International Conference on Eurasian Security: October 31, 2024, Minsk   Despite the assurances given to the Soviet leadership and our repeated warnings over the last 20 years, NATO has relentlessly expanded eastward, creating direct military threats to Russia right on our borders. This aggressive course ultimately triggered the Ukrainian crisis. The “catalyst” was the February 2014 coup in Kiev organized by Washington and its European allies. It brought Ukrainian ultra-nationalists to power who set a course to eradicate everything Russian and launched a war against millions of Russians and Russian-speaking people who refused to recognize the illegitimate authority of the coup leaders. ️ This is the root cause of the crisis, which Western leaders prefer not to remember today, instead chanting a scripted message about “returning Ukraine to the 1991 borders”. They care only about te... Source: Russian Mission Geneva