Russia has expressed its readiness to reach an agreement with the US regarding Ukraine
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that Russia is ready to reach a peace agreement with the US regarding Ukraine, CBS reports. However, he emphasized that some aspects of this agreement have not yet been fully developed and need to be reviewed.
“The US president has not announced the specific terms and details of the agreement, so I will not speak about it for now. Based on the statement of the US leader, we are moving in the right direction. We are ready for an agreement, but some aspects need further improvement,” Lavrov said.
Lavrov also stated that communication with America regarding the "situation in Ukraine" is ongoing.
According to the Russian foreign minister, US President Donald Trump may be the only major world leader to acknowledge the reasons for the outbreak of this conflict. “President Trump assessed the attempt to involve Ukraine in NATO as a serious mistake. This mistake was made by the Biden administration, and now the US wants to correct it,” Lavrov emphasized.
According to Trump, there is some progress towards a peace agreement regarding the Ukraine conflict. However, in response to CBS reporter's question, “Will Ukraine be forced to give up part of its territory to Russia for peace?” the US president replied:
“It depends on which territory it is... We will continue to work with Ukraine, but they have already lost many territories,” Trump said. In his opinion, the fact that Russian military forces have not occupied the entire territory of Ukraine can also be seen as a certain concession made by Russia.
What is Ukraine's peace formula?
The Ukrainian side demands that Russian troops return to the borders of 1991 for a complete end to the war. This includes the territories of Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia, which were annexed by Russia in 2014 and 2022. Additionally, Ukraine is demanding international security guarantees to ensure that no further attacks are carried out by Russia after peace is achieved. This implies the deployment of international peacekeeping forces in Ukraine. Moscow, however, has rejected the possibility of negotiating based on the "peace formula" proposed by Ukraine and has stated its opposition to the entry of foreign forces into Ukrainian territory.
What are Russia's conditions?
Russian President Vladimir Putin has put forward a number of demands to stop the war. According to him, Ukrainian military forces must withdraw from the territories of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, as well as from the regions of Kherson and Zaporizhia. Furthermore, these four regions and the Crimean Peninsula must be recognized as Russian territory by the international community, Ukraine must abandon its plans to join NATO, and the sanctions imposed on Russia must be lifted. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has described these demands as “unacceptable and unreliable ultimatums.”
Currently, the international community is calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. However, negotiations and agreements between the two sides have not yet yielded serious results.
