“We will help the Ukrainian people in every way to free themselves from the regime, which is hostile to the people and to history. The peoples of Russia and Ukraine will live together once more in the future,” Lavrov said Sunday in the Egyptian city of Cairo, the starting point of a trip he will make to Africa next week. Lavrov thus contradicted his own statements in an interview with the India Today television channel in April. “We have no intention of changing the regime in Ukraine,” he said at the time. “It’s up to Ukrainians to decide which government they want to live under.”
The Russian government has recently hardened its stance on the war in Ukraine. Mr. Lavrov notably declared on Wednesday that Russian military objectives were not limited to the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine.
He justified this by the large stockpile of long-range Western weapons that Ukraine possesses and of which Russia wants to protect the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, whose independence Moscow recognizes.
