MOSCOW: Russia said on Wednesday (Aug 20) attempts to resolve security issues relating to Ukraine without Moscow’s participation were a “road to nowhere”, sounding a warning to the West as it scrambles to work out guarantees for Kyiv’s future protection.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov particularly criticised the role of European leaders who met United States President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House on Monday to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine that could help to end the three-and-a-half-year-old war.
Lavrov said Russia was in favour of “truly reliable” guarantees for Ukraine and suggested these could be modelled on a draft accord that was discussed between the warring parties in Istanbul in 2022, in the early weeks of the war.
At the time, Kyiv rejected that proposal on the grounds that Moscow would have held effective veto power over any military response to come to its aid.
“We cannot agree with the fact that now it is proposed to resolve questions of security, collective security, without the Russian Federation. This will not work,” Lavrov told a joint news conference after meeting the foreign minister of Jordan.
“I am sure that in the West and above all in the United States they understand perfectly well that seriously discussing security issues without the Russian Federation is a utopia, it’s a road to nowhere.”
Lavrov’s comments highlighted Moscow’s demand for Western governments to directly engage with it on questions of security concerning Ukraine and Europe, something it says they have so far refused to do.
Moscow this week also restated its categorical rejection of “any scenarios involving the deployment of NATO troops in Ukraine”.
