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Russia rejects peace proposal being floated around by Trump team to end war in Ukraine, ‘We are not happy…’
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also warned that even if Donald Trump “tries to relaunch bilateral ties, he will have to swim against the stream.”
Russia’s foreign minister has rejected the peace proposal Donald Trump’s team has floated around to end the war in Ukraine. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reportedly said that Moscow was appalled after learning that Trump and his aides have been considering pushing a peace deal that would allow Ukraine to join NATO.
‘We are not happy, of course, with the proposals made by members of the Trump team’
“Judging from numerous leaks and Donald Trump’s interview with Time magazine on December 12, their idea is to suspend hostilities along the line of contact and transfer responsibility for confrontation with Russia to the Europeans,” Lavrov said at a news conference on Monday, December 30, according to New York Post.
Lavrov added, “We are not happy, of course, with the proposals made by members of the Trump team to postpone Ukraine’s admission to NATO for 20 years and to station British and European peacekeeping forces in Ukraine.”
In his Time interview, Trump said he would not like to discuss his official plan for Ukraine as it would become “a worthless plan” if made public. However, he promised not to abandon Ukraine. Since his landslide election victory, reports claimed he was considering pushing for European troops in Ukraine while delaying Kyiv’s membership into NATO. Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who has been picked by Trump as his special envoy to Ukraine, has suggested cutting off aid to Kyiv and threatening Russia with surging weapons so that both sides would negotiate a peace deal.
Lavrov said that Moscow “would refuse to accept Ukraine’s NATO membership regardless of the territorial factor.” For long, Moscow has maintained that it launched the 2022 invasion of Ukraine to stop the possibility of NATO expanding eastward into the country. Lavrov described this as “aggressive absorption.”
Lavrov further asserted that it is up to Trump to reach out to Moscow regarding the war first. He warned the president-elect that even if he “tries to relaunch bilateral ties, he will have to swim against the stream.”
