Russia still ready for summit in Budapest: Lavrov

By Fatma Zehra Solmaz

ISTANBUL (AA) - Russia remains open to holding a Russian-US summit in Budapest and dialogue between the two sides is ongoing, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, the text of which was published Thursday by the Russian news agency TASS.

"We are still ready to hold the second Russian-American summit in Budapest if it really builds on the well-developed results of Alaska. However, the date has not been determined. Russian-American contacts are continuing," he said.

Lavrov said The Financial Times “has released a false version” of events after linking the cancellation of the Budapest summit to a memorandum on Ukraine that Russia had allegedly referenced.

He emphasized that the newspaper “distorted the essence and the sequence of events to blame Moscow and misdirect (US President) Donald Trump of the path he has offered, i.e. a path toward a sustainable and lasting peace rather than an immediate ceasefire, where (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelenskyy’s European sponsors, who are obsessed with an idea of taking a breather and flooding the Nazi regime with weapons to continue the war against Russia, are seeking to drag him into.”

He added that if the BBC could fabricate a video of Trump’s speech by inserting a call to storm the Capitol, then in his words, the Financial Times would have no hesitation in lying as well.