Sergey Lavrov Quotes

Any human life is priceless.

We are concerned about what the US and its closest allies are doing with respect to Venezuela, brazenly violating all imaginable norms of international law and actually openly pursuing the policy aimed at overthrowing the legitimate government in that Latin American country... US companies operating in Venezuela are exempt from these sanctions. In other words, they wish to topple the government and derive material gains from this... According to our sources, the leaders of the opposition movement who have declared ‘dual power’ are in fact receiving instructions from Washington not to make any concessions until the authorities agree to abdicate in some way. Together with other responsible members of the international community, we will do everything to support President Maduro’s legitimate government in upholding the Venezuelan constitution and employing methods to resolve the crisis that are within the constitutional framework...
Given signals coming from the EU and... Caribbean countries, as well as...China and India... we would like to figure out what the international community could do to prevent another blatant violation of international law and violent regime change... This is what I discussed yesterday with the Iranian foreign minister, who - just like us - wants to find an opportunity for external players to prove themselves useful to the Venezuelan people.

In 2014, our Western colleagues “swallowed” the anti-constitutional armed coup in Ukraine, and since then they’ve been unable to hold that government accountable, although they have long since understood who they are dealing with. Having once branded them democrats and partners, they cannot publicly criticise them now. That's the problem.

The EU has evolved from a constructive economic platform, as it was created, to an aggressive and belligerent player which already displays its ambitions far beyond the European continent.

With Ukraine... we didn't just get up and go to war against Ukraine [just because] we didn't like Zelenskyy, or because he stopped appearing in KVN [a Russian and formerly Soviet comedy TV show and international competition] and stopped maintaining his theatre, Kvartal 95 [a publicly owned television production company founded by Volodymyr Zelenskyy]. It was for a reason; we warned [Ukraine] for many, many, many years.

The West has declared war on us, on the whole Russian world. The culture of canceling Russia and everything connected with our country is already reaching the point of absurdity.

We are determined to help the people of eastern Ukraine to liberate themselves from the burden of this absolutely unacceptable regime.

International officials, including the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and, to my great regret, the UN Secretary-General and many other UN representatives, are subjected to pressure from the West and often act as mouthpieces for fake news.

In many Western countries, everyday Russophobia has become of an unprecedented nature, and, to our great regret, is encouraged by government circles in a number of countries.

We have absolutely no intention of — or interest in — crossing Ukraine's borders.

A day after that, President Poroshenko declared martial law, and three days later the US declared that they need to increase their military presence in the Black Sea.... an incident was inflated into a scandal... used to shore up the absolutely groundless hopes of the incumbent president of Ukraine... in line with the US plans to build up its military presence near our shores. If you follow the logic of “who stands to gain?” you can draw your own conclusions.

The geography is different. This is far from being only the DPR and LPR. It is also the Kherson region, the Zaporizhzhia region and a number of other territories, and this process continues, and continues consistently and persistently.

We proposed not creating any threat on the ground and Putin explained very clearly why he took the decision to conduct this special military operation.

We will certainly help the Ukrainian people to get rid of the regime, which is absolutely anti-people and anti-historical.

What do they mean by insolent remarks that the countries external to the Western Hemisphere are not allowed to have any interests there?... Take a look at the map of the U.S. military bases—the whole world is dotted with red spots and each of them poses rather serious risks.