Ukrainian Foreign Minister: I thought more than once about punching Lavrov in the face during the talks that took place at the beginning of the war!
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in an interview broadcast on Monday that there were times when he felt the need to throw a “punch in the face” to his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in the talks that took place at the beginning of the Russian invasion.
Kuleba made the statement in an informal hour-long interview with a Ukrainian blogger that focused on topics ranging from cooking, hobbies and Ukrainian football.
In response to a question about the most difficult aspect of the negotiations, Kuleba said, “The most difficult talks were those where you simply felt like you wanted to go to your opponent and punch him in the nose, but you couldn’t really do that”.
He added, “I can say that this happened two or three times, one of which was with Lavrov in the Turkish Antalya resort in the spring of 2022”.
Ukrainian and Russian negotiators held several rounds of talks in the first weeks of the invasion in February 2022.
The talks were initially held near Ukraine’s border with Belarus and then in Türkiye.
Kuliba said at the time that the talks in Türkiye were difficult and dealt with a ceasefire and preparing humanitarian corridors.
The two sides however, didn’t reach an agreement in those talks and no negotiations have taken place since then.
