Russian foreign minister warns West over excluding Moscow from security discussions

Russia’s foreign minister has sent the West a warning over excluding Moscow from security discussions on Ukraine. Speaking on Wednesday (20 August), two days after Donald Trump hosted Volodymyr Zelensky and other western leaders in the White House, Sergei Lavrov said alienating the Kremlin is a “road to nowhere”. “We cannot agree with the fact that now it is proposed to resolve questions of security, collective security, without the Russian Federation. This will not work,” he said. Lavrov said that Russia will continue to express its "legitimate interests fairly and harshly”, and that the US must understand that excluding Moscow is futile.