MOSCOW, March 28 (RIA Novosti) - Russia hopes the situation in Ukraine will be fairly evaluated by the West, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday, after the UN passed a resolution declaring Crimea's referendum invalid.
"I plan to discuss the situation in Ukraine ... and hope the situation will be accepted with a feeling of truth by our European partners," Lavrov said during talks with his Cypriot counterpart, Ioannis Kasoulides.
The Cypriot foreign minister asked Lavrov to assess the events in Ukraine, while stressing the EU has a firm stance on the issue.
In the wake of rising ultranationalist rhetoric in Kiev, the country's largely Russian-speaking republic of Crimea sought reunification with Russia, a move backed by over 96 percent of voters in a referendum held in the region earlier this month.
On Thursday, the UN General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution condemning the referendum as illegitimate.
The reunification was finalized last week, following the republic's appeal to Moscow to rejoin the country after having been undemocratically gifted to Ukraine by Soviet leaders 60 years ago.
Russia has consistently warned that the new government in Ukraine, which came to power last month unconstitutionally, has a dangerous fascist element of Ukrainian ultra-nationalism, leading Moscow to take steps to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
