Russia needs to be forced to engage in diplomacy, Ukraine says, after Putin’s Foreign Minister poured cold water on the idea of peace talks being imminent while blaming President Volodymyr Zelensky of refusing to cooperate.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is “ready to meet” so long as an agenda to Russia’s liking is set out beforehand but Ukraine is refusing to accept any of Moscow’s “points”, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov complained on Friday. Speaking to NBC, the veteran Russian diplomat — who has served the Kremlin since the time of the Soviet Union — said Zelensky’s behaivour made it impossible to countenance a meeting because the Ukrainian is “pretending to be a leader”.
Lavrov told the network, while belittling the host for failing to comprehend the points he believed he was making, that: “Putin is ready to meet with Zelensky when an agenda is ready for a summit. This agenda is not ready at all”.
Referring to the Alaska meeting last week when it seemed likely a breakthrough was nearing, Lavrov said Putin and President Donald Trump had come to an agreement on “several points” and it was now Ukraine’s fault for not accepting them wholesale. While claiming Russia was willing to be flexible, he nevertheless said: “When President Trump brought those issues to the meeting in Washington, with Zelensky present together with his European sponsors, it was very clear to everybody that there are several principles which Washington believes must be accepted, including no NATO membership, including the discussion of territorial issues, and Zelensky said no to everything.”
Ukraine’s President Zelensky responded in part to the Russian’s comments as he spoke alongside NATO’s Secretary General during a visit to Kyiv on Friday, rubbishing the assertion that it was Ukraine dragging its heels on peace. Calling for leaders’ talks — a trilateral format between Zelensky, Putin, and Trump has been widely discussed — Zelensky remarked: “It is at the leadership level that the issue of ending the war should be resolved, but we now see that the Russians are doing everything they can to prevent the meeting from taking place. Unlike Russia, Ukraine is not afraid of any meetings with leaders. We are ready to work productively, to the maximum extent possible.”
If Russia does drag things on, this should be a pretext for Ukraine’s allies to turn the screws on Moscow, Zelensky said, calling for Russia to be forced to the peace table. He told the cameras: “We must force them to engage in diplomacy. We need really strong sanctions if they do not agree to a diplomatic solution to this war, if they do not want to end the war.”
While this would include sanctions, ultimately he said “everything must be done to prevent Russia from continuing to hide from the meeting”.
President Zelensky also responded to earlier comments from the Russian leadership this week, where Lavrov articulated his view in remarks on Wednesday and Thursday that Europe attempting to build a new security infrastructure in Ukraine to deter future wars is actually undermining peace, not supporting it. Lavrov had said a foreign military deployment of peacekeepers to Ukraine, which is ultimately exactly what the West envisions will keep their eastern-European neighbours polite in future, would be “absolutely unacceptable”.
Europeans are trying to “exacerbate” tensions with an “anti-Russian” deployment and Russia should be included in security arrangement planning, he said. Keeping Moscow out of the anti-Russian-invasion planning would be a “road to nowhere”, Lavrov claimed.
In apparent response, President Zelensky called it hypocritical for Russia to invade its neighbours and then insist on having a seat at the table on how to protect those neighbours from itself in future. He said in Kyiv: “When Russia raises the issue of security guarantees, I honestly don’t know who is threatening them yet. They attacked us (…), and I don’t quite understand what guarantees the aggressor needs. Guarantees of what? So for me, this is still unclear. I think that our partners in Europe want to prevent the war from repeating itself, and the only trigger for this is Russia”.
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