Russia says it wants to be part of Ukraine security talks, warning any bid to make decisions by “clumsy” European nations without Moscow is a “road to nowhere”.Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov followed up comments dismissing Europe’s bid to arrange security guarantees for Ukraine as utopian and a “road to nowhere” with fresh remarks on Thursday that may amount to a fresh bid to slow or derail peace talks by introducing new demands.
While President Trump had revealed on Monday that “President Putin agreed that Russia would accept security guarantees for Ukraine”, it was never made clear what it was Putin had signalled his consent to and now Russia is finessing its conditions in public. Lavrov said today that any foreign military deployment to Ukraine — the very core of what European nations have in mind for Ukrainian security guarantees — would be “absolutely unacceptable for Russia”.
The Russian career diplomat who has been in the foreign ministry since the days of the Soviet Union accused European states of wishing to “exacerbate” tensions by creating an “anti-Russian” alliance “based on aggressive intentions towards our country”. Security guarantee talk amid the Coalition of the Willing is “further attempts to inflict a strategic defeat on us” and a bid to “undermine” Putin-Trump peace talks, he claimed.
These remarks follow others, as previously reported, made by Lavrov on Wednesday when he declared that any attempts to cater for Ukraine’s future safety without Russia at the table are doomed to failure. He said claimed the West “understand perfectly well” that talking security without Russia at the table is “a road to nowhere”. (Read More)
