Russia Demands Role in Guaranteeing Ukraine's Postwar Security [View all]

Source: NY Times

Russia’s top diplomat on Wednesday said the country would insist on being a part of any future security guarantees for Ukraine, a condition that European and Ukrainian officials widely see as absurd.

It was the clearest sign yet that enormous gaps remain in the negotiations over a possible end to Russia’s invasion. And it added to the uncertainty over how a European effort to rally a “coalition of the willing” to protect a postwar Ukraine, possibly with Western soldiers stationed inside the country, would fit into President Trump’s plans for a peace deal with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

“Seriously discussing issues of ensuring security without the Russian Federation is a utopia, a road to nowhere,” Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, told reporters in Moscow after a meeting with his Jordanian counterpart.

Kyiv’s supporters largely dismiss the idea that Russia could be a part of ensuring Ukraine’s future security, given that it launched its military intervention there in 2014 and its full-scale invasion in 2022. But Mr. Lavrov signaled that Mr. Putin had not budged from his insistence on having a decisive say over Ukraine’s future sovereignty as part of any peace deal.


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