'It’s The Limit,' Lavrov Explains Publication Of Correspondence With Le Drian, Maas

Sergey Lavrov has explained the decision to disclose his correspondence with the French and German counterparts with just one phrase: "It’s the limit!"

"We are all humans. I can tell you - it’s the limit," Lavrov said while answering a corresponding question. "But we feel no despair at all, naturally. It is not very appropriate on the part of my colleagues to behave the way they do. For the past two weeks, when their initiative for having a ministerial level meeting of the Normandy quartet was discussed, they were making arrogant, not very appropriate and not very ethnical statements: ‘Everybody is ready, Putin has given orders, but Lavrov does not want it.’ Something like that."

Lavrov recalled that in a conversation with Germany’s acting Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron Putin in response to insistent calls for a ministerial level meeting replied that he would ask the foreign minister "to look into what can be done about this."

"But the whole previous discussion focused on the fact that not a single decision by the previous summits and ministerial level meetings of the Normandy Quartet has been implemented exclusively by the regime in Kiev," Lavrov said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday made a decision to disclose diplomatic correspondence between Lavrov and his French and German counterparts Jean-Yves Le Drian and Heiko Maas in order to prevent distortions of Moscow’s stance regarding the idea of a meeting of the Normandy Quartet’s foreign ministers. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova explained that the published correspondence would make it possible for everybody to see Russia’s proposals regarding the Normandy Quartet to make a future meeting meaningful and to prove that the Western partners’ allegations to the effect Russia was taking an unconstructive stance were groundless.