
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused European countries on Saturday of doing "everything they can to hinder" the prospects of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, during a speech at the UN General Assembly in New York.
Lavrov accused the West of "supplying" Ukraine with weapons and helping Kiev attack civilians and civilian infrastructure with drones and missiles.
"The West aspires to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, but these aspirations will result in a strategic dead end for the warmongers," he said.
Referring to the Middle East, Lavrov said Russia was convinced that the time had come to resolve the "main issue" in the region by securing Palestinian statehood based on "countless" UN decisions.
He also called on the US to immediately release former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, and called the use of force to assassinate Iran's late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, "unacceptable."
Regarding artificial intelligence, Lavrov said that Moscow supports China's initiative to create a global organization for cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence.