Russia won’t accept NATO troops in Ukraine as part of any peace deal, says Foreign Minister
Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov says that his country will not accept NATO troops in Ukraine as part of any peace deal.
His comments came on the sidelines of his country’s meeting with United States negotiators currently going on in Saudi Arabia
On Monday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was “ready and willing” to put United Kingdom’s troops into Ukraine after a ceasefire but Lavrov says any Nato troops in Ukraine would be “unacceptable”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says today’s talks with Russia are the “first step of a long and difficult journey” to ending the war in Ukraine
He explained some of the initial steps agreed to in today’s talks between the US and Russia aimed at opening dialogue to bring an end to the Ukraine war.
Among them, he says, is a goal to re-establish diplomatic missions in Washington DC and Moscow, and to appoint negotiation teams to discuss an end to the conflict.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Zelensky speaking in Turkey insists Ukraine will not cede territory: “The East is ours, Crimea is ours and all the other towns and villages that are important for us”
In a related development, Polish President Andrzej Duda says the US does not plan to reduce American troops on Nato’s Eastern flank.
“There is absolutely no American intention whatsoever to reduce activity here in our part of Europe, especially in terms of security, to reduce the number of American troops,” Duda says after meeting with Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia Keith Kellogg in Warsaw.
Duda says he hoped earlier plans to create a permanent US military base in Poland, which he had dubbed ‘Fort Trump’ during Trump’s first term in office, could still be realized.
“Here we even talked about the fact that I hope that Fort Trump, which we talked about during President Donald Trump’s first term, will really come into being and that there will be such a very strongly entrenched American military presence in our country,” he says.
About 10,000 US troops are currently stationed in Poland on continual rotation.
