Russia will not settle for Nato troops in Ukraine, Lavrov says after talks with US

Russian Overseas Minister Sergei Lavrov has stated his nation will not settle for peacekeeping forces from Nato nations in Ukraine underneath any peace deal, following high-level talks with the US in Saudi Arabia.

“Any look by armed forces underneath another flag doesn’t change something. It’s in fact utterly unacceptable,” he stated.

Russia and the US stated that they had agreed to nominate groups to begin negotiating the top of the struggle.

“In the present day is step one of an extended and troublesome journey, however an essential one”, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated following the assembly.

Ukraine was not invited to the talks, which its president Volodymyr Zelensky stated was a “shock”.

The assembly in Riyadh was the primary time since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Russian and American delegations are recognized to have met face-to-face.

Additionally on the assembly in Saudi Arabia have been US Center East envoy Steve Witkoff and US Nationwide Safety Advisor Mike Waltz, in addition to Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov and the pinnacle of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriev.

Afterwards, Lavrov stated the US and Russia would appoint ambassadors to one another’s nations as quickly as potential and create circumstances to “restore co-operation in full”.

“It was a really helpful dialog. We listened to one another, and we heard one another,” he stated.

He reiterated Russia’s earlier place that any enlargement of the Nato defence alliance – and Ukraine becoming a member of it – can be a “direct menace” to Russia.

Rubio in the meantime stated he was “satisfied” Russia was “keen to start to interact in a critical course of” to finish the battle.

“There needs to be concessions made by all sides. We’re not going to predetermine what these are.”

European leaders held a hastily-arranged assembly in Paris on Monday to debate their response to the obvious rapprochement between Russia and the US underneath President Trump – however didn’t agree a unified place.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer stated any Ukraine deal would require a “US backstop” to discourage Russia from attacking its neighbour once more and stated he would think about deploying UK troops to Ukraine.

However Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a key Nato ally, stated for his half, discussing sending troops to Ukraine at current was “utterly untimely”.

In Riyadh, Rubio stated the European Union was going to “need to be on the desk in some unspecified time in the future as a result of they’ve sanctions as effectively which have been imposed”.

On the absence of Ukraine on the assembly, he insisted “nobody is being side-lined”.

“Everybody concerned in that battle needs to be OK with it, it needs to be acceptable to them,” he added.

Ukrainian chief Volodymyr Zelensky seemed visibly drained and upset when he gave his response to the assembly throughout a information convention in Turkey.

“We wish every part to be honest and in order that no one decides something behind our again,” he stated.

“You can’t make choices with out Ukraine on find out how to finish the struggle in Ukraine.”

He shall be alarmed by all the grins on each American and Russian faces in Riyadh, however he’ll know that he can do little to vary no matter they agree on over his head.

The Ukrainian president may even know that his nation’s probabilities of resisting – not to mention defeating – Russian troops with out American assist are very slim.