Russia opposes Western peacekeepers in Ukraine

MOSCOW: Russia is against the deployment of Western peacekeeping troops to Ukraine as part of any settlement to end the nearly three-year conflict, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.

Talk of the possible stationing of foreign troops in Ukraine to enforce any peace deal is circulating in Western capitals, with French President Emmanuel Macron and Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk discussing the issue in a meeting in Warsaw this month.

In an interview published Monday by the Russian foreign ministry, Lavrov told the state-run TASS news agency that Moscow opposed that idea as well as others being proposed by US President-elect Donald Trump.

“Of course, we are not satisfied with the proposals being voiced by representatives of the president-elect to postpone Ukrainian NATO membership for 20 years and to send to Ukraine a peacekeeping contingent of ‘British and European forces,'” Lavrov said.

The Kremlin had previously said it was “too early to talk about peacekeepers”.

Trump, who comes to power in three weeks, has claimed he can strike a peace deal in 24 hours and said he will use Washington’s multibillion-dollar financial and military support to Kyiv as leverage.

He has yet to propose a concrete plan but members of his team have floated various ideas, including the deployment of European troops to monitor any ceasefire along the 1,000-kilometre (620-mile) front line and a lengthy delay on Kyiv’s ambitions to join the NATO military alliance.

Both the Russian and Ukrainian presidents have ruled out direct talks with each other, and positions in Kyiv and Moscow appear far apart on what would be acceptable terms for a peace deal.

Russian President Vladimir Putin previously demanded that Ukraine withdraw its troops from four eastern and southern regions — Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia — that Russia claims to have annexed, while Kyiv has repeatedly ruled out ceding territory to Moscow in exchange for peace.