Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed the need to recognize and formalize the accession of Crimea, Donbas, and Novorossiya to Russia at the international level.

According to the Russian news agency TASS, he said, “For peace to be durable, the new territorial realities that emerged after the accession of Crimea, Sevastopol, the DPR [Donetsk People’s Republic], the LPR [Lugansk People’s Republic], and the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions to the Russian Federation following the referendums must be recognized and formalized under international law.”

Lavrov identified three other prerequisites for achieving lasting peace, including “eradicating the underlying causes of the conflict, which include threats to Russia’s security that arose in the wake of NATO’s expansion and attempts to drag Ukraine into this aggressive military bloc.” He added, “These threats must be eliminated, and a new system of security guarantees for Russia and Ukraine must be formed as an integral part of a pan-continental architecture of equal and indivisible security in Eurasia.”