Sergey Lavrov denies dismissal rumors and clarifies Putin-Trump summit details

Following rumors of a possible removal from his post as Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, he gave his first interview to Russian media. Earlier Western media had speculated that his position could be left vacant because of the failure of the Putin–Trump summit.

According to the Russian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Lavrov skipped the meeting of the Russian Security Council and for the first time in several years did not lead Russia’s delegation at the G20 summit in Johannesburg. The Kremlin denied his removal, stating that he continues “active work”.

In an interview published on November 11, Lavrov refuted the Financial Times’ report that negotiations between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump collapsed after the Russian Foreign Ministry handed the State Department a list of Moscow’s hard demands for the terms of peace in Ukraine, after which Lavrov’s conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio occurred. The minister said that the memorandum had been transmitted even before Putin’s conversation with Trump, after which the U.S. president announced their planned meeting.

Lavrov also denied that his conversation with Rubio was tense, as the FT had written. He added that in the memorandum transmitted to the United States, “as it seemed” to Moscow, the agreements from the previous Putin–Trump meeting were recorded. After the talk with Rubio, meetings between the foreign-policy and military officials of the two countries were to be organized, likely with the involvement of intelligence services.

There’s a joke: our conscience is clean, we rarely use it. But in this particular case – it’s absolutely true

Context of the publications and the Kremlin’s reaction

“Dialogue is always better than any confrontation, arguments or even war,” said the Russian leader after Trump promised to meet Putin in Budapest. At the end of October, the Financial Times, citing sources, reported that Washington canceled the planned meeting after Moscow sent the American side a document “confirming its hard demands on Ukraine”.

According to FT, the memorandum, sent by the Russian Foreign Ministry, contained demands to remove the “root causes” of the conflict: Moscow demanded territorial concessions from Kyiv, a reduction of the Ukrainian armed forces, and guarantees that Ukraine would not join NATO. It also spoke of control over all Donbas.

After receiving the memorandum a telephone conversation took place between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. According to FT, after the talks Rubio told Trump that Moscow was not showing willingness to negotiate; one of the publication’s sources noted that the U.S. president was “not impressed” with Russia’s position.

Following these events, Trump said that a meeting with Putin could be postponed or canceled, but that “we will do it in the future”; later Washington announced sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil and their subsidiaries. Putin, commenting on the decision regarding the meeting, noted that Trump “was rather talking about postponing it,” emphasizing: “Dialogue is always better…”

Separately, it should be noted that in the final part of FT’s materials it indicates that after the memorandum Moscow demanded pressure on Kyiv and control over Donbas, and that subsequent steps depended on the development of the negotiation process between the United States and Russia.