Moscow (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – Foreign Minister of Russia Sergei Lavrov praised U.S. President Donald Trump for saying that earlier U.S. support of Ukraine’s proposal to join the NATO military alliance was the main reason for the war in Ukraine.
Donald Trump has stated that he noticed no way that Russia could have permitted Ukraine to become part of NATO and accused former Democratic President Joe Biden of allegedly adjusting the U.S. role on NATO membership for Ukraine.
“He is the first, and so far, in my opinion, the only Western leader who has publicly and loudly said that one of the root causes of the Ukrainian situation was the impudent line of the previous administration to draw Ukraine into NATO,”
Lavrov briefed legislators.
“No Western leaders had ever said that, but he had said it several times. This is already a signal that he understands our position when President (Vladimir) Putin,”
Lavrov also said.
Is Russia using Trump’s statements to push for further NATO concessions?
A day earlier, amid discussions with the United States in Riyadh, Russia insisted NATO scrap its 2008 commitment to one day give Ukraine membership of the U.S.-led NATO military alliance and disregarded the notion that NATO member parties could be keepers of the peace under some sort of ceasefire agreement.
Sergei Lavrov said discussions in Saudi Arabia, where he sat with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. national security adviser Mike Waltz and Middle East representative Steve Witkoff, had been valuable and that both flanks had listened to each other.
As the session was underway, Russia’s foreign ministry expressed Moscow’s long-standing disapproval of NATO membership for Ukraine needed more than just not allowing Ukraine to join the alliance for now.
“A refusal to accept Kyiv into NATO is not enough now,”
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria
Zakharova stated.
“The alliance must disavow the Bucharest promises of 2008,”
She stated in Moscow, referring to a NATO meeting that year where both Ukraine and Georgia were notified they could join the coalition but without a plan or any path for how to get there.
