By David Child-Aljazeera
Russia’s foreign minister has said Russia does not want a war after Washington warned Moscow may invade Ukraine next month.
Sergey Lavrov told Russian media on Friday that the Kremlin was not seeking conflict with Kyiv, but restated Moscow would not allow its security interests to be ignored.
“There won’t be a war as far as it depends on the Russian Federation, we don’t want a war,” he said in a live interview with Russian radio stations.
On Thursday, the United States and NATO responded to Russia’s sweeping security demands that were raised in December after Moscow built up troops near the border with Ukraine. Primarily, Russia wants NATO to commit to permanently blocking Ukraine from becoming a member of the alliance.
Russia said the replies gave it little cause for optimism because there was “no positive response to the main question”, but could serve as a starting point for talks on “secondary questions”.
