🎙 Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s answers to media questions following the 7th #CICA Summit (Baku, October 15, 2026)

Key points

• The West is clinging in every way it can to its hegemony, which is slipping away irretrievably and irrevocably, and is violating, as I said before, everything that was agreed upon within the globalisation system, which the West itself strongly promoted.

• As for the diesel deal, it was brought to the table, and we supported it. But Zelensky has said publicly on several occasions, “Stop bothering me about this diesel deal. Give me Patriot system missiles instead for I need to keep striking Russia’s energy sector, including its oil refineries.” This is a direct and, moreover, crudely worded challenge to US President Donald Trump, who has actively supported this deal and spoken publicly about it on several occasions. I think everyone understands this by now. They are also fully aware that such behaviour has become typical of Vladimir Zelensky, who believes that the whole world owes him, while he owes nothing to anyone. He is unwilling to take any constructive steps that would be genuinely fair and based on equality.

• We operate on the premise that the objectives of the special military operation have been clearly defined which fact stands in contrast to the West’s position on Ukraine, which regularly makes 180 degree turns or, as former German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock once put it, 360 degree turns. Our position has never changed.

• Zelensky has already made it quite clear that he is not interested in holding elections and surrounded the whole idea with conditions that are patently unacceptable. There will be no ceasefire that would make it possible for him to regain his senses and be once again supplied with more weapons.

• Since the Anchorage summit in August 2025, where a long-term approach formed the basis of the US proposals that we supported, Western initiatives and ideas have been constantly backtracking on the positions that only take us further away from sustainable peace and a negotiated settlement. Consequently, everything will be decided by our Armed Forces on the battlefield, as President Putin has repeatedly made clear, notwithstanding our continued readiness for normal, meaningful, and honest talks.

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