Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov answered a media question at a joint press conference with Peru's Foreign Minister Carlos Espa (Moscow, November 9, 2026).
Question: What are your expectations from the upcoming talks in Abu Dhabi? Speaking about the talks earlier, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the conflict would have to be resolved before discussions could begin on security guarantees for Ukraine and Europe. We noticed that the Russian delegation was expanded this time to include Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. Does this mean that there will be a separate track for negotiations?
Sergey Lavrov: I heard US Secretary of State Marco Rubio speak about the growing importance of security issues, both in the talks in Abu Dhabi and in the broader context of the conflict in Ukraine.
In fact, the first item on the agenda in Abu Dhabi is the security of Russia, Ukraine and the entire region. We can only welcome this approach.
Let me remind you what we did to prevent what was otherwise inevitable. We know what plans the government in Kyiv planned in late 2021 and early 2022 to resolve the Donbass issue by force. In December 2021, according to the instructions of President Vladimir Putin, we presented to the US and NATO members two draft treaties aimed at strengthening the foundations of equal and indivisible security.
After that several meetings were held. A Russian interagency delegation met with our NATO counterparts. I then met in Geneva with Anthony Blinken, who was the United States Secretary of State at the time. We explained to him in detail why it is essential to do everything in our power to implement the principles of indivisible security. These principles were proclaimed loud and clear at the highest level of the OSCE, yet they were swept under the rug.
One of them states that no organization in the Euro-Atlantic region has the right to claim military and political dominance. NATO did exactly the opposite.