British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss - RBC: "We do not want to impose sanctions"

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss in a blitz interview with RBC assessed the negotiations with Sergey Lavrov, called the condition for the introduction of new sanctions against RUSSIA and the area where cooperation continues

00:00 Advertisement 00:00 00:00 / 00:00 You can skip ads through More VideoMore VideoMore Video

On Thursday, February 10, talks were held in Moscow between British Foreign Minister Liz Truss and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The Truss visit is the first visit to Russia by a British Foreign Secretary since 2017. According to the Russian minister, the talks were disappointing and rather resembled "a conversation between a mute and a deaf person." In an interview with RBC, the British minister gave her assessment of the negotiations and the future of relations with Russia.

- After your press conference with Lavrov , it became clear that you could not agree on a single point. Do you think the visit was a failure?

- The reason for my visit to Moscow was the need to call on the Russian government to withdraw troops from the Ukrainian border. Now there are more than 100 thousand soldiers there. And it threatens Ukraine. Russia expressed commitment and respect for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine, and its right to self-determination is also very important. We have made it clear that if Russia invades Ukraine, it will have to pay a high price, both in terms of sanctions and the prospect that it will be a prolonged conflict, and we think that this kind of conflict is bad for both the Russian people and for Ukrainian, and for European security.

What we want to see is diplomacy. We want to see Russia at the negotiating table with NATO. NATO has made its proposals to improve transparency and confidence building measures. This is exactly what I came to talk with Minister Lavrov about. Our countries are members of the UN Security Council, and there are issues on which we agree - we agree on Iran and the need to prevent the possibility of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. We discussed this with Minister Lavrov. We also have common positions on Afghanistan and the need to stop the country from sliding into a humanitarian crisis. So there are issues on which the UK and Russia are working together. But I want to make it clear that we would welcome Russia's participation in the negotiations, not the invasion of Ukraine.