Russia to stop fighting in Ukraine when talks produce durable result - Lavrov

ANKARA. Feb 24 (Interfax) - Moscow will stop fighting in Ukraine only when negotiations produce a durable result, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday.

"Noteworthy is the U.S. position, it has been declared consistently, and it doesn't call for making peace and leaving the contact line immediately and then thinking what to do. We've always stressed that this option doesn't work for us. This option was tried in Istanbul in April 2022," Lavrov said at a press conference in Ankara.

"The [Russian] president has said clearly that we are prepared to negotiate with Ukraine, with Europe, and with any other representatives that wished to help achieve peace in the spirit of goodwill, but we'll stop fighting only when these negotiations produce a firm and durable result satisfying Russia," he said.

"The realities on the ground must be taken into account," Lavrov said.

"In line with the Russian constitution, this choice has assumed an international legal dimension and an international legal status. And certainly, respecting all those realities is mandatory. As is a categorical [guarantee of] Ukraine's non-accession to NATO - there must be a clear ironclad agreement on that," he said.

"At the meeting with our American counterparts in Riyadh, we welcomed the fact that [U.S.] President [Donald] Trump has publicly and repeatedly referred to the course toward dragging Ukraine into NATO as a mistake, saying that, if he had been president in those years, he would have never allowed this course to dominate, and therefore, in his words, there would've been no crisis. But there can be no doubts that dragging Ukraine into NATO is among the key root causes of the current events," Lavrov said.