Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov launched a sharp attack on the United States, accusing it of hypocrisy, after his US counterpart Anthony Blinken said Russia should not be allowed to get away with launching a war in Ukraine, during a security forum they attended in New Delhi on Friday.
The Russian and US officials attended the G20 foreign ministers' meeting in the Indian capital this week, meeting face-to-face for the first time since Russian forces invaded Ukraine a year ago.
"If we allow Russia to get away with it and do what it's doing in Ukraine, that's a message to others who might launch aggression that maybe they can get away with it too," Blinken told the Raisina Strategic Affairs Dialogue forum.
Speaking at the same forum after Blinken's speech, Lavrov said that Russia is being held accountable for its actions in Ukraine by "double standards" at a time when the United States justified military intervention in various regions of the world, such as the Iraq war, air strikes on Libya, and the bombing of Yugoslavia during a conflict. Kosovo in 1999, with what it said was a "threat to its national interests".
The date of the negotiations
Lavrov also said that the question of when Russia will negotiate to end the war should be put to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
And he added, "Everyone is asking when Russia will negotiate.. The West constantly says that the time has not yet come for negotiations, because Ukraine must win the battle before any negotiations."
The Russian minister went on to accuse Washington of "attempting to militarize" the Quadripartite Security Dialogue, a partnership between the United States, Australia, India and Japan that focuses on strategic issues in the Indo-Pacific region.
Earlier in the day, Blinken met with his counterparts from the Quartet, and they issued a statement saying that "the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is unacceptable."