Ambassador Andrei Kelin’s interview to Andrew Marr on LBC News, 16 January, 2024

Watch the Russian Ambassador to the UK Andrei Kelin’s interview to Andrew Marr on LBC News. Excerpts from the interview: ▪︎We have a problem with Ukraine in the first place since the West has started to make out of it a geopolitical instrument against Russia. ▪︎The document that signed by the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and President Zelensky is a memorandum of promises. It outlines British policy towards Ukraine and clearly states that Ukraine will not get negotiated settlement and should fight. ▪︎We respect the sovereignty of Ukraine. We had negotiations in April 2022 on this subject. The draft was stipulating exactly what is non-threatening to Russia and we have almost agreed. But pressured by Boris Johnson (then the British Prime Minister) Ukraine suddenly withdraw from the negotiations. ▪︎We, of course, detest any terrorist activity and what has happened on the October 7, but we do not support what’s going in Gaza right now. We appeal that violence should stop in Gaza and negotiations should take place in order to arrange two-state solution. You cannot contain Palestinians, you need to give them a state solution. This is what neither Israel nor the US do not want to implement. ▪︎I think that it’s important for the UK in the first place and for the West as a whole to take a realistic view on the situation on the ground [in Ukraine]. If the current [Western] policy will be continued in a sense of sending troops [military equipment], providing money, paying the Ukrainian budget, we will quickly arrive to a point when Ukraine became a failed state. It has no economy because industry doesn’t work, agriculture is 40% less, half of the Ukrainian population is now out of the country and has no intention to return. ▪︎I hardly imagine [the military conflict between Russia and the Baltic states]. As President Putin has stated many times we have no intention to fight against other countries in the region. ▪︎The main idea of the US administration right now is to include Ukraine into the EU structures and NATO to put this burden into Europe onto European shoulders. The US should finally concentrate on its own policy and allow other states live in a multipolar world. Finally, we have lots of powers - India, China, South Africa, Brazil, Russia. All of us would like to keep up independent policy. ▪︎I don’t see any chance for the conflict between Russia and the UK. We are on a different sides of a chess board. We are nuclear States. What kind of a conflict may arise btw our countries? It’s a common knowledge that the nuclear war should not be fought because it cannot be won. #Kelin #Marr #Russia #UK #US #Ukrain #MiddleEast #NATO #RusEmbUK