Russia on Wednesday rejected the idea of European peacekeeping troops serving in Ukraine, contradicting claims earlier this year by U.S. President Donald Trump that Vladimir Putin would accept such a force as part of a peace deal.
At a press conference, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Moscow had a “negative attitude” toward discussions on sending European military personnel as peacekeepers, noting that the expansion of the NATO alliance over the past quarter century had been “one of the root causes” of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
His comments cast doubt on Trump’s previous assertion that Putin was open to a European-led peacekeeping mission. Sitting beside French President Emmanuel Macron in Washington on Feb. 24, Trump said he had “specifically asked” Putin about the issue and had been assured the Russian leader “has no problem with it.”
Ukraine has made Western-backed security guarantees a central demand in any settlement to prevent further Russian attacks. Work on those guarantees accelerated following a gathering of European leaders in the White House on Aug. 18, at which Trump pushed for a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Putin.
But frustrations have grown since then, with Moscow reluctant to commit to peace talks. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the day after the White House encounter that any summit would have to be prepared “step by step, gradually, starting from the expert level and then going through all the necessary stages.”
Moscow has also doubled down on its own demands, including that Kyiv cede more territory in eastern Ukraine. Zelenskyy had previously vowed that Ukraine would not hand over the eastern Donbas region, as it would provide Putin a springboard for a future invasion.
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