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Regarding the “causes of the conflict”, Lavrov reiterated the accusation that ethnic Russians in Ukraine have been persecuted and killed, particularly since the 2014 coup in Kyiv. He cited the incident at the Trade Union Building in Odessa on May 2, 2014 as an example, and said that after 2014 Ukrainian forces killed “over ten thousand Russian and Russian-speaking residents of Donbas”. The Kyiv regime, he said, declared war on the Russian language and culture, passing laws prohibiting their use and discriminating against ethnic Russians. Other ethnic groups, such as Hungarians, Romanians, Poles and Bulgarians, had also been affected by “violent Ukrainisation”.

Another major cause, he said, was NATO’s “years of eastward expansion”, which transformed Ukraine into a “military springboard for containing Russia”. Lavrov denied that NATO was still a purely defensive alliance, citing military interventions in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya. The presence of NATO bases in Ukraine, he said, poses an “imminent threat” to Russia’s national security. He recalled that at the end of 2021 Russia had demanded security guarantees to preserve Ukraine’s non-aligned status. However, this initiative was rejected by the West and Ukraine instead continued to build up its military presence, leaving Russia “no choice” but to launch the “special military operation”.

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Uffe åsså breva här och de förstora hjärna....