Lavrov claims that Russia has “secret” contacts with some EU leaders. About Macron he says that “he is not serious” / “All the Europeans do is to sabotage the negotiations between us and the Americans”

Vladimir Putin is willing to answer a phone call from his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron for “serious” discussions, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, at the same time qualifying as “pathetic diplomacy” the French leader's statements regarding a possible resumption of dialogue with Moscow. At the same time, he claimed that there are contacts between Moscow and some EU leaders, but they ask that they not be disclosed publicly, reports News.ro citing the TASS agency.

“If you want to talk and talk seriously about something, then call. Putin will always answer the phone. He listens to all proposals,” Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the Russian RT television station.

“Macron, about two weeks ago, said again: 'I will call Putin one day'. It's not serious, you know, it's some kind of pathetic diplomacy,” he added.

On the other hand, in the same interview for RT, in which he repeated many of the propaganda and anti-Western positions of the Kremlin, Lavrov claims that there are European leaders who maintain contacts with Russia, but requests that these discussions not be made public, some of them communicating “in secret”, reports the TASS agency.

“We have contacts with some European leaders. They call and ask that the information about these discussions not be made public. Some come here and make contact “in secret”, he said.

The only EU leaders who have come to Moscow in recent years – and their presence was public – are the prime ministers of Hungary and Slovakia, Viktor Orban and Robert Fico, respectively.

“The Europeans maintain an uncompromising position”

The Russian minister stated, however, that the position of the EU in the context of secret contacts with Russia does not differ from the public one. “Nothing that the European partners communicate to us in these closed and confidential contacts differs from what they say publicly. They are the same calls: “Let's finish”; “We have to do something,” Lavrov stressed.

“I don't see any position on the part of Europe. They fell into their own trap. They adopted an uncompromising position: “strategic defeat of Russia”, “Ukraine cannot lose, and Russia cannot win, otherwise Europe will lose its prestige”, continued the head of the Russian MFA.

At the same time, Lavrov accused the Europeans of trying to sabotage the negotiations that took shape between Russia and the US regarding Ukraine. “All they are doing now is to obstruct and sabotage the negotiations that have taken shape between us and the Americans, and now the Ukrainian representatives are joining them,” said the Russian diplomat whose interview was broadcast on the day that trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi between the Russians and the Ukrainians, with the mediation of the US, did not result in any notable results apart from a new prisoner exchange and the resumption of high-level military dialogue between Washington and Moscow.