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Moscow Hopes West Realizes Responsibility Over Ukraine, Help Those Who Want Peace - Lavrov

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Moscow hopes that the West will realize its responsibility over what is occurring in Ukraine and will help those who want peace, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday.

BERLIN, August 18 (RIA Novosti) — Moscow hopes that the West will realize its responsibility over what is occurring in Ukraine and will help those who want peace, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday.

"We are also working with our western colleagues, first and foremost in Europe and the United States, who may have actual influence on the militarized units, which are insubordinate to the central forces in Kiev. We know that the West has this type of influence and hope that responsibility for what is happening in Ukraine will be realized and that the needed steps are made to influence those who don’t want to end the war," Lavrov said.

Lavrov called for the United States to influence the Ukrainian authorities, as a country capable of stopping the "fratricidal war."

Lavrov said that unlike Ukraine, Russia has lived up to the previous Berlin agreement of July 2, which said there would be observers and Ukrainian border guards at the Russia border crossings, but only in a situation when a ceasefire is in place.

He said that ceasefire in the regions near the Russian border, agreed upon during the previous Berlin meeting of July 2, has not been achieved, which complicated the communication with Kiev.

Negotiations between Lavrov and his Ukrainian counterpart Pavlo Klimkin were held Sunday night at the Villa Borsig hotel in Berlin, Germany. The talks were also attended by German foreign chief Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his French counterpart Laurent Fabius.

The meeting was the second four-party meeting of the kind. During the previous talks on July 2, also in Berlin, the four foreign ministers agreed on a declaration that called for a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Ukraine’s southeast.

Kiev launched a special operation in eastern Ukraine in mid-April to suppress independence supporters who refused to recognize the legitimacy of its new authorities. Moscow has repeatedly urged Ukrainian authorities to immediately stop the punitive operation and seek a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

According to a report by the mission of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), nearly 1,400 people have been killed since the special operation in eastern Ukraine began, while about 117,000 of Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes and cross into neighboring Russia in search of shelter.

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