U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's team has not presented anything "interesting" to Moscow regarding ending the war in Ukraine, Russia's envoy to the U.N., Vasily Nebenzya, said on Jan. 3 in an interview with the state-controlled Rossiya-1 TV channel.
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.
Nebenzya dismissed these ideas as "unformed, vague signals" and reiterated Moscow’s position against freezing the conflict.
"President (Vladimir) Putin last outlined our conditions for ending the conflict on Dec. 19. So far, nothing from the incoming U.S. administration suggests anything of interest to us," Nebenzya said.
On Dec. 19, Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated his willingness to engage in dialogue with Trump but upheld Moscow’s demands, including the desire to fully occupy four Ukrainian regions — Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — and a rejection of Ukraine’s NATO membership.
Nebenzya also claimed to have received "signals of agreements" from Ukraine, though he rejected them as unserious.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov expressed dissatisfaction with Trump’s reported peace deal proposals on Dec. 29, saying that Moscow rejects any plan that fails to meet its demands.
Despite Trump’s claims of achieving peace "within 24 hours," his team has yet to provide an official roadmap for ending the war.
Tim Zadorozhnyy
(Updated: )
