The Daily Populous

“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.

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.”.

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