Stavroula Pabst – Russia dumps on Trump team’s deal ideas

Moscow says it is less than enamored by NATO moratoriums and peacekeeper plans

Stavroula Pabst is a reporter for Responsible Statecraft

Cross-posted from Responsible Statecraft

President-elect Donald Trump has made Ukraine peace talks a focus of his foreign policy, previously saying he’ll get a Ukraine deal “within 24 hours” and readying his envoy Keith Kellogg for a fact finding/listening tour of Ukraine and European capitals first thing after inauguration.

But Russian officials don’t appear all together convinced by ideas that Trump and his team have been putting out in circulation, suggesting a steep hill to climb regarding Ukraine negotiations.

Namely, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov posits that some of these proposals, if implemented, will simply pass the war effort on to Europeans while failing to address the conflict’s root causes.

“Judging from numerous leaks and Donald Trump’s interview with Time magazine on December 12, [the Trump team’s] idea is to suspend hostilities along the line of contact and transfer responsibility for confrontation with Russia to the Europeans,” Lavrov said in an interview with Russian News Agency TASS.

“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.”

The idea of peacekeeping forces in Ukraine has reportedly been floated several times among the Trump team and European officials in recent months. “As long as Ukraine is not in NATO, this aspect can be considered,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky had said, while emphasizing NATO membership was the only way to ensure Ukraine’s security against future attacks from Russia.

According to Lavrov, Russia instead wants agreements “that would eliminate the root causes of the conflict and seal a mechanism precluding the possibility of their violation.” Lavrov also said Russia is open to restoring relations, but the U.S. must make the first move since it cut them off at the start of the war.

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