MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday that Russia does not see any benefit in a weak ceasefire to freeze the war in Ukraine, but Moscow wants a legally binding agreement to achieve a lasting peace that guarantees the security of Russia and its neighbours.
“A truce is a road that leads nowhere,” Lavrov said, adding that Moscow suspects that such a weak truce would simply be used by the West to rearm Ukraine.
“We need final legal agreements that define all the conditions for ensuring the security of the Russian Federation and, of course, the legitimate security interests of our neighbors,” Lavrov said.
He added that Moscow wants to draft legal documents in a way that ensures “the impossibility of violating these agreements.”
Reuters reported last month that President Vladimir Putin is open to discussing a ceasefire agreement in Ukraine with Donald Trump, but he has ruled out making any major regional concessions and insists that Kiev abandon its ambitions to join NATO.
Putin said last week that he was ready to reach a compromise on Ukraine in possible talks with US President-elect Donald Trump on ending the war, and that he had no conditions for starting talks with the Ukrainian authorities.
Putin said the fighting is complex, so “it is difficult and useless to guess what lies ahead… (but) we are moving, as I said, towards solving our basic tasks, which we set at the beginning of the special military operation.” “.
Trump, who has repeatedly said he would end the war, said on Sunday that Putin wanted to meet him. Russia says there have been no contacts with the incoming Trump administration.
Trump's envoy to Ukraine, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg (NYSE:), will travel to Kiev and several other European capitals in early January, as the incoming administration tries to bring a quick end to the Russia-Ukraine war, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Of trip planning.
Lavrov said: “I really hope that Mr. Trump’s administration, including Mr. Kellogg, will intervene in the root causes of the conflict. We are always ready for consultations.”
Putin says the arrogant US-led West has ignored Russia's post-Soviet interests, tried to pull Ukraine into its orbit since 2014 and then used Ukraine to fight a proxy war aimed at weakening and ultimately destroying Russia.
After overthrowing a pro-Russian president in Ukraine's Maidan Revolution in 2014, Russia annexed Crimea and began providing military support to pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
The West says Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine was an imperial-style land grab by Moscow that strengthened the NATO military alliance and weakened Russia.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that Ukraine's NATO membership was “achievable”, but Kiev would have to struggle to convince allies to make it happen.
Moscow says the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO was one of the main justifications for its invasion. Russia said that Ukraine's NATO membership would make any peace agreement impossible.
