{"id":359674,"date":"2025-08-20T14:54:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T14:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/359674\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T14:54:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T14:54:11","slug":"russia-says-it-must-be-part-of-international-talks-on-ukraines-security-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/359674\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia says it must be part of international talks on Ukraine\u2019s security | Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Moscow has said it must be part of any international talks on Ukraine\u2019s security, as Russia continues to stall on Donald Trump\u2019s push for a meeting between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said on Wednesday that Moscow must be included in any talks on Ukraine\u2019s security guarantees<\/a>, dismissing European diplomacy as \u201caggressive escalation\u201d and a \u201cclumsy effort to sway Trump\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo discuss security guarantees seriously without Russia<\/a> is a road to nowhere,\u201d Lavrov said during a working visit to Jordan.<\/p>\n

Lavrov also said that China, Russia\u2019s ally in the war, should be among Ukraine\u2019s security guarantors \u2013 reviving a proposal first put forward by Russian negotiators during talks in Turkey in spring 2022.<\/p>\n

European leaders have begun exploring post-conflict security guarantees for Ukraine, following Trump\u2019s pledge<\/a> to help protect the country under any deal to end Russia\u2019s war.<\/p>\n

Russian officials have repeatedly said Moscow would not accept the deployment of European forces to Ukraine, one of the key security guarantees under discussion.<\/p>\n

Kyiv is likely to view with scepticism any prospect of China, a supporter of Russia during the war, acting as a security guarantor.<\/p>\n

Lavrov, meanwhile, avoided any direct reference to a possible Putin-Zelenskyy summit, highlighting the Kremlin\u2019s apparent plans to delay any concrete planning of a meeting.<\/p>\n

Trump announced this week he had \u201cbegun the arrangements\u201d for the first meeting between the two leaders since the start of Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion.<\/p>\n

Trump later claimed he had set up a bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy, explaining: \u201cI thought I\u2019d first let them meet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Opening direct talks with Zelenskyy would cut against the storyline Putin has cultivated since the 2022 invasion \u2013 portraying Ukraine\u2019s president as an illegitimate figure and a mere puppet of the west.<\/p>\n

Putin, who almost never refers to Zelenskyy by name and instead speaks of the \u201cKyiv regime\u201d, has repeatedly cast doubt on whether his Ukrainian counterpart even holds the authority to sign a peace agreement. \u201cYou can negotiate with anyone, but because of his illegitimacy, he [Zelenskyy] has no right to sign anything,\u201d Putin told Russian officials earlier this year.<\/p>\n

But Trump\u2019s promise of a meeting puts Putin in a difficult spot: rejecting it risks tension with the US president, while agreeing to one would elevate Zelenskyy to equal status and confront Putin with a media-savvy rival ready to meet almost without preconditions.<\/p>\n

Moscow has shown scant sign of preparing for such an encounter.<\/p>\n

Lavrov cautioned on Wednesday that any contact between the two leaders would need to be arranged \u201cwith the utmost care\u201d, while other Russian officials dismissed Zelenskyy as a lightweight unworthy of serious attention.<\/p>\n

But, as often is the case, Moscow has avoided closing the door entirely, hinting that the Putin\u2013Zelenskyy encounter could take place, while giving no sign that it is actually on the horizon.<\/p>\n

Several countries have offered<\/a> to host a possible Putin-Zelenskyy meeting, including the Vatican, Switzerland and Hungary.<\/p>\n

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The Russian leader reportedly suggested to Trump that his counterpart travel to Moscow for talks \u2013 an idea Russia knew Kyiv would reject because of the obvious risks to Zelenskyy\u2019s safety.<\/p>\n

Analysts suggested that the Russian leader would probably only meet Zelenskyy to accept Russia\u2019s maximalist conditions, which would equal Ukraine\u2019s capitulation.<\/p>\n

\u201cPutin will not meet Zelenskyy under the current circumstances,\u201d said Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. \u201cHe has repeatedly stated that such a meeting would only be possible if there were well-prepared grounds, which in practice means Zelenskyy\u2019s acceptance of Russia\u2019s terms for ending the war.\u201d<\/p>\n

Figures close to the Kremlin have emphasised that Putin sees no need to rush into a meeting with Zelenskyy.<\/p>\n

\u201cSimply put, Putin only sees value in a meeting with Zelenskyy if it ends with a capitulation,\u201d wrote the nationalist commentator Alexei Mukhin. \u201cIf Zelenskyy is unwilling to sign one, the Kremlin will keep \u2018working on\u2019 the idea of a meeting until he is,\u201d Mukhin added.<\/p>\n

Putin now faces a situation reminiscent of earlier moments when Trump pressed him to agree to a ceasefire. At the time, he managed to manoeuvre around the pressure, and analysts believe he is likely to take a similar approach now \u2013 downplaying the prospect of talks without rejecting them outright.<\/p>\n

The key question is whether Trump will seek to put pressure on Kyiv to accept some of Russia\u2019s demands to clear the way for a meeting between the two leaders.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s leadership on Wednesday showed no sign of compromise. Lavrov said the US was beginning to gain a clearer understanding of the \u201croot causes\u201d of the war \u2013 a phrase Putin has used to describe demands ranging from Ukraine\u2019s formal renunciation of Nato membership to its \u201cdemilitarisation\u201d and \u201cdenazification\u201d, a vague formula that in practice would mean removing Zelenskyy.<\/p>\n

The Russian foreign minister also pointed to the April 2022 talks in Turkey between Russia and Ukraine as a model. Those failed negotiations centred on Moscow\u2019s demands for Ukraine\u2019s disarmament, political neutrality and the abandonment of its ambition to join Nato.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Russian officials told Reuters that Moscow was preparing to raise taxes and cut spending to sustain high defence outlays and keep the war effort going.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Moscow has said it must be part of any international talks on Ukraine\u2019s security, as Russia continues to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359675,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[332],"class_list":{"0":"post-359674","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-russia"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115061670790774408","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}