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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said any Western security guarantees for Ukraine in an eventual peace deal could only be enacted with Moscow's cooperation—essentially rendering them useless against another Russian invasion. Lavrov's remarks, at a Wednesday press conference with the Jordanian foreign minister, ran counter to the Trump administration's assertion that President Vladimir Putin agreed to European and U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine at the Alaska summit on Friday. They were also a potent sign that Moscow's position on the war hasn't shifted despite a surge in diplomatic engagement in recent days.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said any Western security guarantees for Ukraine in an eventual peace deal could only be enacted with Moscow's cooperation—essentially rendering them useless against another Russian invasion.
Lavrov's remarks, at a Wednesday press conference with the Jordanian foreign minister, ran counter to the Trump administration's assertion that President Vladimir Putin agreed to European and U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine at the Alaska summit on Friday. They were also a potent sign that Moscow's position on the war hasn't shifted despite a surge in diplomatic engagement in recent days.
The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lavrov, one of the two top Russian officials who participated in the Alaska talks alongside Putin last week, said any agreement on security guarantees should be based on the Russian proposal during the failed March 2022 peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
According to that proposal, which Lavrov erroneously described as approved by Kyiv at the time, Russia would have a veto power over any action by the other guarantors of Ukrainian security—making those assurances pointless. On Wednesday, Lavrov said China should also have equal powers in these guarantees.
“We will safeguard our legitimate interests in a firm and harsh manner,” Lavrov said. “Seriously discussing issues of ensuring security without the Russian Federation is a utopia and a path to nowhere…The security of all the interested parties, including Ukraine's neighbors, should be guaranteed on an equal, indivisible basis.”
Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said Moscow is sending a signal that it won't accept anything that is precooked by the U.S. and Europeans in negotiations without the Russians at the table.
“Moscow's hope is that the meeting between Putin and Trump has established their personal rapport and that substantive negotiations over Ukraine will be lengthy, buying Russia time to continue pushing Ukraine on the front line,” he said.
Russia, alongside the U.S. and the U.K., provided assurances of respecting Ukraine's territorial integrity and independence in the 1994 Budapest memorandum, under which Kyiv surrendered to Moscow the nuclear arsenal it inherited from the Soviet Union. With the full-scale invasion of 2022, Moscow also violated its other commitments under the 2015 Minsk agreements brokered by France and Germany.
The White House portrayed Russia's supposed agreement to Western security guarantees as a major achievement of the summit with Putin. After a Washington meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump indicated his openness to U.S. military support for European troops that might be deployed in Ukraine after a peace deal. Senior U.S. and European military officials have been meeting in recent days to prepare plans for such a mission.
On Tuesday, Trump signaled that the U.S. is prepared to use air power to support a European security force in Ukraine. Trump didn't specify the role the U.S. military might have in providing air support to a European ground force—whether it would include warplanes, air-defense systems or surveillance drones, for instance.
“When it comes to security, they are willing to put people on the ground,” Trump said in an interview with “Fox & Friends,” referring to the Europeans. “We're willing to help them with things, especially probably, if you talk about by air, because there is nobody has the kind of stuff we have.”
The idea for these guarantees is to make any peace agreement stick—and to make it more palatable for Ukraine to agree to territorial concessions demanded by Putin.
It is unclear if Lavrov's remarks on Wednesday mean that Russia is backing out of the understandings reached in Alaska—or that the Trump administration misunderstood what the Kremlin really meant. Putin, in his own statement in Alaska, only vaguely said that he had agreed with Trump that Ukraine's security needed to be assured.
The White House also said on Monday that Putin has promised to have a direct meeting with Zelensky. There has been no confirmation of this from Moscow.
Lavrov said Wednesday that Putin merely agreed to “raise the level of representation” in talks that have taken place this year in Turkey between Russia and Ukraine, and to expand them beyond military issues to “political aspects of a settlement.” Any summit between Zelensky and Putin will require “thorough preparation” so that it marks a “final point” in these negotiations, he added—a justification Russia has previously used to steer clear of meeting the Ukrainian leader.
On Monday, Zelensky said that he was ready for any format of talks, including holding a bilateral meeting with Putin.
“We are ready for any formats at the level of leaders, because only at the level of leaders can we resolve all those complex, painful issues,” he said.
Putin has repeatedly dismissed the Ukrainian president as a Western puppet and cast doubt on his legitimacy, questioning Zelensky's authority to sign a peace deal.
The settlement in Ukraine, Lavrov said, would require removing the “root causes” of the conflict, which he described as the rise to power of a “Kyiv regime” in 2014 and “the extermination of all Russian and Russian-speaking population on Ukrainian territory.”
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com and Georgi Kantchev at georgi.kantchev@wsj.com
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Source: HindustanTimes
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