Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says that Donald Trump’s election “win” won’t change the United States’ stance on Ukraine. Considering all political puppets are attached to the same bird, we tend to agree.

Trump will most likely continue to pump money into the war with Ukraine, and could possibly advance it.  Trump has promised to end the conflict, but it’s unlikely he’ll be able to do so anyway if Ukraine insists on keeping the war moving forward.

Commenting on the potential impact of the US presidential election on the Ukraine conflict in an interview broadcast on Russia 1 on Wednesday, Lavrov suggested that Washington will always seek to control everything that is happening in the areas bordering NATO territory, no matter who the president is.

“I have no doubt that they will want to keep these processes under their control… Washington’s attitude towards Ukrainian affairs and European affairs will not change in principle, in the sense that Washington will always strive to keep under its watchful eye everything that happens in the areas near NATO and the NATO area itself,” Lavrov said.

“Some [Western politicians] have started to look more soberly at the Ukrainian situation and say, ‘what’s lost is lost, let’s somehow freeze this entire thing.’ Yet… they still suggest having a truce along the contact line for ten years. These would be the same Minsk accords in a new wrapping, or even worse,” Lavrov stated. He was referring to the now-defunct Minsk agreements brokered by Russia, France, and the UK in 2014-15, which were supposed to deescalate the conflict between Kiev and the then-Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk and pave the way for administrative and political reform in Ukraine. The accords, however, were instead used to buy time for Kiev to build up its military. –RT

Lavrov added that the “deliberate extermination of everything Russian” in Donbas was one of the root causes of the conflict between Kiev and Moscow and that any proposals aimed at ending it would have to include language rights for the ethnic Russian population of Ukraine.