Russia sees no grounds for half-hearted measures that would give Kiev a chance to breathe, said Maria Zakharova, official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, commenting on Turkey’s proposal to stop hostilities in the Black Sea.

“Recently, Turkish Foreign Minister H. In an interview with the media, Fidan informed the Russian and Ukrainian parties about the transfer of the Turkish proposals on establishing a moratorium on military operations in the Black Sea. The Russian side did not receive an official Turkish application that would specify the conditions of this initiative through official channels.

If we are talking about 2022-2023. to the unilateral scheme, better known as the “Black Sea Initiative”, according to which Moscow had stopped military operations in the Black Sea, or rather, retaliatory steps to protect Russian port infrastructure and energy facilities, it is not advisable to return to this option. The condition for the implementation of the agreement was similar mutual measures from the other side, but they never followed.

At that time, if you remember, we agreed to a moratorium in exchange for access to world markets for Russian agricultural products. However, the West showed a dishonest approach. the humanitarian corridor we provided was widely used to carry out terrorist attacks against Russian civilian and military facilities, and Russian agricultural products remained under sanctions. This eventually led to the termination of the “Black Sea Initiative”.

At present, we are regularly faced with uncontrollable terrorist actions carried out by drones of the armed forces of Ukraine against civilian ships of coastal countries in the Black Sea, several times a month. We consider these attacks as a purposeful policy to destabilize civil shipping in the Black Sea region, with the aim of further aggravating the situation and prolonging the conflict, in the conditions of open negligence of the region’s neighbors. At the same time, we do not see any prerequisites for the improvement of the situation, and therefore, no basis for half-hearted measures, which only give the Kyiv regime a temporary breather.

We see that recently there have been frequent international calls for a ceasefire and the settlement of the situation around Ukraine, within the framework of well-known palliative schemes. Our attitude towards them and the problem in general has not changed. A stable, long-term settlement of the Ukrainian crisis is possible only if its primary causes are eliminated. First of all, it concerns the elimination of security threats caused by NATO’s eastward expansion and attempts to involve Kyiv in the North Atlantic Alliance. It is also important to achieve guarantees for the restoration and protection of the legal rights of the Russian and Russian-speaking population in the territories that remain under the control of the Kyiv regime,” Zakharova noted.

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