VLADIVOSTOK, April 11 (RIA Novosti) – Russia considers bringing peacekeepers into Ukraine an unnecessary measure that should not be brought up in the UN Security Council, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday.
“I don’t think that we need to talk about any kind of peacekeepers or any decisions by the Security Council,” Lavrov said during an interview on the Rossiya television channel.
Lavrov also dismissed attempts to portray the upcoming four-party talks with the US and EU on the crisis in Ukraine as a sign of Moscow’s recognition of the Kiev government’s legitimacy.
“This variant is being discussed by our Western partners. We told them that this would not happen. This meeting will take place, and we will start this meeting by giving our clear explanations that this isn’t so,” Lavrov said.
According to Lavrov, the Ukrainian authorities themselves need to realize their responsibility before their citizens and take into consideration the interests of all the country’s regions.
The four-party talks initiative came after protests in eastern Ukrainian cities intensified earlier this week, with citizens refusing to accept their newly-appointed governors as legitimate.
Protests for federalization, centered in the cities of Donetsk, Kharkiv, and Luhansk, swept across Ukraine’s eastern and southeastern regions. The demonstrators have been calling for Crimea-style referendums on the status of their regions within Ukraine.
The government in Kiev vowed a harsh crackdown on the protestors, who it accused of separatism.
