Ukrainian foreign minister says he felt urge to punch Russia’s Sergei Lavrov in the face

Ukraine’s foreign minister says he felt the urge to punch his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in the face when the two met in the early stages of Moscow’s invasion.

Dmytro Kuleba made the remarks in an hour-long informal interview with a Ukrainian video blogger published on Monday.

“The most difficult talks are those in which you feel simply that you want to go and punch your opposite number in the nose, but you really can’t do that,” the minister said.

“And I can say that this occurred two or three times. One occasion was with Lavrov in (the Turkish resort of) Antalya in spring of 2022,” he said.

Delegations of Ukrainian and Russian ministers held several rounds of talks shortly after Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February 2002.

The first set of talks were held near Ukraine’s border with Belarus and another round of negotiations was held in Turkey later.

At that time Mr Kuleba described the talks in Turkey as difficult, revealing that negotiators discussed a ceasefire and arranging humanitarian corridors.

Officials in Moscow seized opon Mr Kuleba’s remarks about wanting to “punch” Mr Lavrov as a potential propaganda opportunity. Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, said they showed Ukraine was being led by “uneducated, aggressive people” in comments run by Russian daily Izvestia.

No negotiations have been held since those talks in Turkey, with Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration saying it will not accept a ceasefire or peace agreement that allows Russia to keep hold of any of the territory it has seized in the nearly two year-long war.

Ukraine has instead presented its own 10-point peace plan that requires the return of all Ukrainian territory, including the Crimean peninsula illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.