Published time: 7 Jul, 2017 20:02
FILE PHOTO: Houses damaged during a shelling by the
Ukrainian military, in Donetsk © Irina Gerashchenko / Sputnik
A special channel between the Russian and American
presidents will be established to further push for a settlement of the
Ukrainian crisis, Russia's Foreign Minister Lavrov has announced following the
Putin-Trump meeting.
Additional efforts will be made "to support"
the Minsk peace agreements and the work of the existing contact group on
Ukraine, Russia’s chief diplomat said.
"While discussing Ukraine, the American side
informed us that they had appointed a special representative to assist the
efforts on settling the Ukrainian crisis.
"Arrangements have been made to create a
channel between presidents of Russia and US to use this opportunity that
Washington has, to further advance the settlement based on the Minsk agreements
and considering the potential established in the contact group and the Normandy
format," Lavrov told reporters during the G20 summit in Hamburg,
Germany.
Moscow hopes to soon meet the US representative "for
consultations," he added.
Saying that "everyone is interested"
in fulfillment of the Minsk agreements, to which Kiev "is the main part,"
Lavrov said Moscow "senses that its Western partners very much
understand the necessity of additional influence" on the peace process
which so far has been delayed.
Citing his "long" talks with the US
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson earlier in the day, as well as a Thursday
meeting with the French Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian, Lavrov
said everyone agrees the crisis needs to be settled within the framework of the
Minsk agreements.
"I have a feeling that it has been confirmed
that both the Russian and American presidents are driven by their national
interests, which they see primarily in looking for mutually beneficial
agreements rather than by trying to play out some confrontational scenarios.”
Lavrov added that the Ukrainian issue had been
discussed "in a concrete, businesslike" manner.
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