Russia wants … Russia to have veto over Western security guarantees for Ukraine

Moscow isn’t shifting on what it considers to be acceptable security guarantees for Ukraine, a top Kremlin official said Wednesday.

The comments by Moscow’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov undercut hopes that any progress has been made toward ending the Ukraine war since Russian President Vladimir Putin met with U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday in Alaska.

Lavrov’s remarks further indicate that the Kremlin has not softened on its maximalist positions on Ukraine: that it becomes a neutral rump state; drastically reduces its military; and abandons its NATO membership aspirations after Russia is finished with it.

“Moscow won’t agree with collective security guarantees negotiated without Russia … Russia will accept if the security guarantees to Ukraine are provided on equal basis with the participation of countries like China, the United States, the United Kingdom and France,” Lavrov said in a press conference, after meeting the Jordanian foreign minister.

Beijing and Moscow having any say in how security guarantees for Ukraine would work is a nonstarter for Western allies, even as they attempt to cobble together a plan to protect Ukraine after any ceasefire or peace agreement comes into force.

In a further example of the Kremlin’s recalcitrance on taking steps to end its full-scale invasion that began in February 2022, a mooted meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy remains a distant prospect, according to comments Lavrov made earlier this week.

On Wednesday, Lavrov returned to a concept proposed during the Istanbul peace talks in April 2022 that involved a NATO-like coalition of guarantor nations providing security guarantees to Ukraine. That idea flopped on the Western side because Moscow demanded a unanimous clause that had to be green-lighted by all countries, including Russia, before the guarantees could be triggered.

“I am confident that in the West — first and foremost in the United States — they perfectly understand that discussing the issue of security without the Russian Federation is a utopia, a road to nowhere,” Lavrov said at a press conference.

Putin’s top diplomat also hit out at the EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas, an ardent Russia hawk, whose statements he said are “a degradation of the foreign policy methods.”

Trump, who touted recent meetings with Putin and then Zelenskyy and European leaders as a success, told Zelenskyy and European leaders during their Monday meeting that Ukraine will have “Article 5-like” NATO protections, but omitted any specifics — while pledging later that no American boots will be on the ground in Ukraine.

European leaders ultimately don’t believe Putin is sincere about a peace deal — and Lavrov’s statements provide ballast to that theory.