moscow: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that it was not easy to agree with the United States on the key parts of a possible peace deal to end the war in Ukraine and that Russia would never again allow itself to depend economically on the West.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, has repeatedly said he wants to end the “bloodbath” of the three-year war in Ukraine, though a deal has yet to be agreed.
“It is not easy to agree the key components of a settlement. They are being discussed,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with the Kommersant newspaper when asked if Moscow and Washington had agreement on some aspects of a possible peace deal.
“We are well aware of what a mutually beneficial deal looks like, which we have never rejected, and what a deal looks like that could lead us into another trap,” Lavrov said. The Kremlin on Sunday said that it was too early to expect results from the restoration of more normal relations with Washington.
Lavrov said that Russia’s position had been set out clearly by President Vladimir Putin in June 2024, when Putin demanded Ukraine must officially drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw its troops from the entirety of the territory of four Ukrainian regions
claimed by Russia.
Meanwhile, Kyiv forces hit Russia’s Kursk region that borders Ukraine with dozens of drones, killing an elderly woman, injuring nine people and sparking fries in several buildings in the region’s administrative centre, Russian authorities said on Tuesday.