Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov defends the ongoing invasion of Ukraine in a French TV interview.
The fighting is now focused on the Donbas - the mining belt made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Separatists in the two regions, which historically have strong ties to Russia, broke away in 2014 and are now fighting alongside Russian troops to take full control.
However, he added, it was up to the rest of Ukraine if people there were "happy to return to the authority of a neo-Nazi regime that has proven it is Russophobic in essence".
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