Sergey Lavrov: Thank you very much for this opportunity to receive you at the Foreign Ministry during your stay in Moscow.

We are always glad to see our Cypriot friends. Any political combination in your government is aimed at promoting our partnership. We appreciate these feelings of the people of Cyprus, and we reciprocate with a very friendly attitude and a desire to promote our relations as much as possible.

Despite the well-known difficulties in Europe and in global relations, friends are always friends. As they used to say, a friend in need is a friend indeed. I believe this is the way to characterise Russian-Cyprus relations, so welcome once again, Mr Kyprianou.

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Sergey Lavrov: You know that we always supported and continue to support the implementation of the Security Council resolutions on Cyprus. We strongly believe that it is only for local communities to decide by consensus how they want to live together, without any attempts by outside players to impose any solutions.

We all remember some not very good experiences when arbitration was proposed, which did not bring about any improvements. We certainly will be doing everything we can to help promote the solution between the two communities, but without any artificial deadlines and without any ultimatums from the outside.