Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday that Washington's approach to ending the war in Ukraine recognizes what Moscow calls the "realities on the ground" and rules out efforts to bring Kyiv into NATO.
Speaking in an interview with Channel One’s Bolshaya Igra show, Lavrov said these principles formed the basis of discussions during recent contacts between Russian and U.S. representatives, including a meeting between U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
"I can safely tell you that the substance of what was discussed is based on the position that President Trump set out on Ukraine immediately after returning to the Oval Office,” Lavrov said.
He said the first element of the U.S. position was that efforts to bring Ukraine into NATO should be abandoned.
"He (Trump) said, first of all, that they should even forget about trying to bring Ukraine into the North Atlantic Alliance,” Lavrov said, adding that Trump had described the issue as "settled.”
The second element, according to Lavrov, was the U.S. recognition of what "realities on the ground.” He stressed that Moscow understood the term as referring not simply to territory but to the people living in the areas concerned and their political preferences.
"The realities on the ground that President Trump and his team recognize, as far as we can judge, and continue to recognize ... are connected with people,” he said.
Lavrov dismissed speculation about what Witkoff and Kushner may have discussed in Moscow and Kyiv, saying the US side had not publicly disclosed details of its next diplomatic steps.
"A lady, a member of the Verkhovnaya Rada (Ukraine's parliament) has already said that what they (Witkoff and Kushner) brought was far worse than what Ukraine had previously rejected,” he said.
He also rejected reports that direct Russia-U.S.-Ukraine talks would necessarily resume after Russia’s Sept. 20 parliamentary elections, saying such statements had come from the French side rather than Washington.
Turning to the EU position, Lavrov said European countries had several opportunities to play a constructive role in efforts to resolve the Ukraine conflict but to no avail.
"Europeans had a huge number of opportunities to play a constructive role. They believe that without them there can be no negotiations, that they must be at the negotiating table,” he said.
Lavrov pointed to the negotiations that led to the Minsk agreements in 2015 as one such opportunity. He also cited the Russia-Ukraine talks in Istanbul in 2022, saying Russian negotiators had accepted proposals put forward by the Ukrainian side.
The minister criticized former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, former French President Francois Hollande and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko over their later statements about the Minsk process, saying they had acknowledged that the agreements were used to give Ukraine time to strengthen its army.
Lavrov also disputed former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s account of his role in the collapse of the 2022 negotiations.
The minister cited comments by David Arakhamia, then and now the parliamentary leader of Ukraine’s ruling Servant of the People faction, claiming Johnson had urged Ukrainian officials not to sign an agreement with Russia.
"The Europeans had other opportunities to take the same reasonable and responsible position as the Trump administration - to look at the real facts, the situation on the ground, including the people who live there and their views,” he said.
Instead, he said, European governments continued to call for Russia to suffer a "strategic defeat” and insisted that Ukraine was defending European values.
Lavrov sharply criticized that argument, saying Ukraine is practicing discrimination based on language, nationality and religion.
Asked to clarify his warnings about the possibility of a new war in Europe, Lavrov said they were prompted by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s repeated statements that Russia poses the main threat to Europe and that Germany should become the continent’s leading military power.
Lavrov said Merz had repeatedly spoken of the need for Germany to be prepared for a possible war against what he described as the Russian threat.
"He really believes this,” Lavrov said, adding that he did not consider Merz’s statements a "Freudian slip.”
Asked about a possibility of a meeting between Putin, Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in China in November, Lavrov said the Russian leader would not reject such an encounter.
