Moscow, August 19 (LaPresse) – "Russia does not reject any format regarding Ukraine: neither bilateral nor trilateral." This was stated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, emphasizing: "I want to stress this once again: we have never said that our goal was simply to conquer certain territories. Neither Crimea, nor Donbass, nor Novorossiya as territories were ever our objective."
Lavrov then added: "Our goal was to protect people—Russians—who have lived on these lands for centuries, who discovered these lands, shed their blood for them, both in Crimea and Donbass, creating cities: Odessa, Mykolaiv, many others, ports, factories, plants."