The Kremlin cited a geographical blunder by British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss as an example of Western officials’ lack of understanding of the subject matter in the East-West stalemate over Ukraine on Friday.
“This is the reality in which we must defend our position,” Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, said at a briefing, adding that negotiations between France and Germany on settling the situation in eastern Ukraine produced no results on Thursday.
According to two diplomatic sources quoted by Russia’s Kommersant newspaper, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asked Truss if she recognized Russian sovereignty over Rostov and Voronezh, two regions in the country’s south where Russia has been building up its forces, during their closed-door meeting on Thursday.
According to Kommersant, Truss said that Britain would never recognize them as Russians and that her envoy had to correct her. Truss later said in an interview with another Russian publication that she mistook Lavrov’s remark for a reference to Ukrainian provinces.
