Russia rejects European peacekeepers, accuses EU of escalating war while praising Trump
MOSCOW – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Sunday that the United States still wanted to be the world’s most powerful country and Washington and Moscow would never see eye to eye on everything, but that they had agreed to be pragmatic when interests coincided.
Lavrov praised U.S. President Donald Trump’s “common sense” aim to end the conflict in Ukraine, while accusing the European powers of seeking to prolong it.
The Russian foreign minister added that the model of the U.S.-China relationship was the one that should be built between Russia and the United States to do a lot of “mutually beneficial things” without allowing disagreements to collapse into war.
“Donald Trump is a pragmatist,” Lavrov told the Russian military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda, according to a transcript released by the Foreign Ministry. “His slogan is common sense. It means, as everyone can see, a shift to a different way of doing things.”
“But the goal is still MAGA (Make America Great Again),” Lavrov said, referring to Trump’s political slogan. “This gives a lively, human character to politics. That’s why it’s interesting to work with him.”
Last week, Trump warned that the war could escalate into World War III, adding that he had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin on “numerous occasions” and expressed his belief that a peace deal for Ukraine could be reached.
On Friday, he and Vice President JD Vance clashed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the Oval Office. Trump accused Zelenskiy of disrespecting the United States, said he was losing the war and had no cards left.
On the other hand, Lavrov criticised Europe, saying that for the past 500 years Europe had been the crucible of “all the tragedies of the world” including colonisation, wars, crusaders, the Crimean War, Napoleon Bonaparte, World War One and Adolf Hitler.
“Who demands a ‘continuation of the banquet’ in the form of a war? Europe,” he said.
Lavrov also dismissed European ideas for sending in a contingent of European peacekeepers and said Russia had no trust in Ukraine after the collapse of the Minsk agreements, which were designed to end a separatist war by Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine.
Europeans, Lavrov said, could not explain what rights Russian speakers would have under the European peacekeeper plans, adding that Russia did not like the idea of Europeans propping up Zelenskiy.
“Now they also want to prop him up with their bayonets in the form of peacekeeping units. This will mean that the root causes will not disappear,” Lavrov said.
