Foreign Secretary says proposal is ‘unrealistic’; also rejected UN efforts to reactivate the grain agreement
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Ukraine’s proposed peace plan and recent U.N. proposals to revive the Black Sea grain export deal were “not realistic.” The minister spoke to journalists on Saturday (September 23, 2023) after addressing the 78th session of the UN General Assembly.
Kiev presented a tenpoint peace project that Moscow sees as unworkable. “Zelensky’s project can be described in different ways, but it is completely unfeasible. “This is not realistic and everyone understands this, but at the same time they say that this is the only basis for negotiations,” Lavrov said.
“Everything we were promised turned out to be a lie,” Lavrov said of Russia’s withdrawal from the export agreement. He said the country had no interest in returning because it had “no free access to posts in the Mediterranean and elsewhere, nor a solution to the insurance issue, the cost of which has quadrupled.”
Lavrov has said he will visit North Korea in October to continue negotiations begun by Vladimir Putin and Kim Jongun in Moscow. The two met from September 12 to 17 to discuss economic and military cooperation.