 "Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Reuters File")
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Sunday lauded US President Donald Trump’s pragmatic approach to ending the war in Ukraine while criticizing Europe for prolonging the conflict, Russian news agencies reported.
Lavrov warned that deploying European peacekeepers in Ukraine would be tantamount to further “incitement” of Kyiv to continue fighting against Russia.
European leaders, Lavrov said in comments published on the foreign ministry’s website, “want to prop up (Zelenskyy) with their ‘bayonets’ in the form of peacekeeping units.”
Lavrov also commented on the warming US-Russia relations, describing negotiations between senior Russian and US diplomats and other officials in Saudi Arabia in February as “a completely normal conversation between two delegations.”
“We will never think alike on every issue of world politics. We acknowledged this in Riyadh," Lavrov said.
“Two serious countries simply sat down to talk about where they are going wrong, and what their predecessor messed up in four years,” he added, accusing the Biden administration of “destroying all channels of contact without exception.”
With inputs from agencies