Russia’s goals in war stand, official says

SKOPJE, North Macedonia — Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov delivered a blunt message to Western leaders Friday and declared at an international security conference that his government was not prepared to “review its goals” in Ukraine.

“We aren’t seeing any signals from Kyiv or its masters about their readiness to seek any kind of political settlement,” Lavrov told reporters while attending an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe conference in North Macedonia.

“We see no reason to review our goals,” he said.

North Macedonia, which joined NATO in 2020, waived a flight ban on Russian officials so Lavrov could attend the two-day meeting of the OSCE’S Ministerial Council, prompting the top diplomats of Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to skip the event in protest.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a brief stop in North Macedonia’s capital, Skopje, before Lavrov arrived.

Participants at the meeting accused Moscow of undermining the OSCE with its war in Ukraine. The Vienna-based organization, originally created to ease Cold War tensions, includes 57 member countries from North America, Europe and the former Soviet Union.

“It is Russia that is waging an unprovoked and unlawful war against Ukraine, and it is Russia that is obstructing the OSCE agenda,” Ambassador Katrina Kaktina, Latvia’s representative to the group, said Friday.

“Russia is continuing violations of human rights: deliberate killings of civilians, including children, forced deportations, tactics of torture and sexual violence. Those are war crimes being committed by Russia in Ukraine,” she said.

Lavrov held talks with the foreign ministers of North Macedonia, Armenia and Hungary.