TIANJIN. July 15 (Interfax) - Moscow does not regard the format of direct Russian-Ukrainian talks in Istanbul as exhausted, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
"If they [Ukraine] declare that this format is exhausted, this means that, apart from not caring about their own citizens, they're also unwilling to negotiate," Lavrov told journalists following a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Foreign Ministers Council meeting in China.
European leaders prohibited Ukraine from doing so "as all those figures unanimously demand that Ukraine be urgently stuffed with more offensive weapons," he said.
Washington "perfectly knows our position as to whether this format has been exhausted, which we've told them," he said.
"It's not exhausted," Lavrov said.