Russia is dissatisfied with the reported peace deal proposals on Ukraine from U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s team, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on December 29, according to state-owned TASS. Earlier reports from the Wall Street Journal indicated that Trump’s team is considering a plan to delay Ukraine’s NATO membership by at least 20 years in exchange for continued Western arms supplies and the deployment of European peacekeepers to monitor a ceasefire. Lavrov said the proposal, as outlined in leaks and Trump’s December 12 Time interview, suggests “freezing hostilities along the current line of contact and transferring the responsibility of confronting Russia to Europe.” “We are certainly not satisfied with the proposals sounding on behalf of representatives of the president-elect’s team,” Lavrov said, specifically rejecting the idea of introducing European peacekeepers in Ukraine.
Reports suggest that President-elect Donald Trump discussed these ideas during a December 7, 2024 meeting in Paris with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron. Trump reportedly emphasized Europe’s need to take the lead in deterring Russian aggression. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov noted that Moscow has received no official signals from Washington regarding these proposals, adding that policy remains under the Biden administration until Trump’s inauguration on January 20. Lavrov expressed Russia’s “willingness to engage” with the new U.S. administration, provided Washington takes the “first move” to restore dialogue severed after the start of Russia’s invasion.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on December 26 that Russia aims to “end the conflict” in 2025 while reiterating hopes for a front-line success. Following Putin’s comments, Sergey Lavrov ridiculed the possibility of a ceasefire, adding that “a ceasefire is a road to nowhere. Putin expressed openness to dialogue with Trump but maintained Russia’s firm demands, including no territorial concessions and a rejection of Ukraine’s NATO membership.
Russia’s rejection of Trump’s peace proposals is significant because it means that the incoming administration will have to revamp its strategy when it comes to negotiating peace between Kyiv and Moscow. As both sides have now rejected parts of the president-elect’s proposal, in order to facilitate negotiations, Trump will have to come up with an entirely new strategy.
President-elect Donald Trump has previously said on numerous occasions that he would end the war in Ukraine “within 24 hours” and his advisers have reportedly been coming up with a peace plan that would involve freezing all conflict at the front lines and creating a demilitarized zone. Keith Kellogg, the president-elect’s nominee to serve as special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, has said that the nearly three-year war between the two countries will be “resolved in the next few months.” During his recent interview with Time magazine Trump said that he will not abandon Kyiv and that he believes the war would not have broken out if he was president. Russia had previously said that it was “ready to study Trump’s proposals on Ukraine” but specified that “studying” did not mean “agreeing.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has previously rejected the idea of freezing the conflict to begin negotiations to end the war. He told the French outlet Le Parisien that Trump “knows about my desire not to rush things at the expense of Ukraine” and said that Ukraine would not give up its territories or its independence.
