Russia's claim that it would recognize neutral Ukraine is a lie

From UNIAN:

""The Other" Ukraine 

Tetiana Urbanskaya, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of UNIAN, 11.12.25 

Amid a new wave of Russian-sponsored "peace" initiatives that the United States is trying to impose on Ukrainians, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has appeared publicly outlining the conditions under which the Kremlin is supposedly prepared to "recognize" Ukraine's independence. 

According to him, Russia has prepared "additional proposals for collective security guarantees," and Ukraine "must again become a non-aligned, neutral, and non-nuclear state." After all, Russia "recognized a different Ukraine," and this, he claimed, was enshrined in its Declaration of Independence.

But I'd like to remind Lavrov and other cronies of the international criminal Putin of an inconvenient fact: in 2014, when the Russian Federation annexed Ukrainian Crimea and sent its troops into the Ukrainian Donbas, Ukraine was, in fact, "non-aligned, neutral, and non-nuclear." Simply put, all the conditions for "recognition of independence," which Lavrov now pompously touts, were met. And this in no way prevented Russia from violating international law and occupying foreign territory.

Incidentally, the aforementioned Declaration of Independence of Ukraine clearly states that the territory of Ukraine "within its existing borders is inviolable and cannot be changed or used without its consent," that the country "has the right to its own Armed Forces," and that relations with its neighbors will be built on the basis of "equality, mutual respect, and non-interference in internal affairs."

Apparently, Lavrov and his boss have no "inconsistencies" between the Ukraine they officially "recognized" in their documents and the one they're talking about now? Is that how it's supposed to be understood?

The botox-addled minds of Russian officials will come up with any nonsense to justify the abrogation of the Budapest Memorandum and the onset of open aggression against Ukraine. After all, on the one hand, all these people remember perfectly well and have spent hours recounting to the Americans the details of their "shared" history with Ukraine, dating back to the time of the Pechenegs. On the other hand, they "suddenly" forget a more recent history: that both Russia and the United States were among the countries guarantoring security for Ukraine, which renounced the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal... Finally, Ukraine continues to be non-nuclear (nothing has changed here in 30 years) and is attempting to negotiate with both of the aforementioned nuclear countries, while one of them has seized a massive nuclear facility—the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant—and is behaving there like a true terrorist.

The lies about Ukraine's hypothetical NATO accession "threats" to Russia simply don't hold up to scrutiny. After eleven years of Russian aggression and nearly four years of full-scale war, Ukraine still isn't a member of any military bloc. And public declarations of a desire to join the North Atlantic Alliance were provoked precisely by the Russian invasion. And who wouldn't want to defend themselves against an aggressor that has already attacked several times? Who wouldn't seek reliable alliances?

All this talk about a "different Ukraine," which Russia once "recognized" and is ready to do so again, is cynical manipulation. Every claim is easily verified by facts, and these facts expose the lie every time."