Russia to prompt Trump fury as it rules out key proposal | World | News
The Kremlin has ruled out allowing NATO to send boots on Ukrainian ground after the illegal war launched by Russia ends. The statement made by Vladimir Putin‘s spokesman Dmitry Peskov will likely anger Donald Trump and Ukraine‘s allies in the West, who are trying to broker a peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow.
As Ukraine seeks security guarantees to swerve another Russian invasion in the future, several Western allies have pledged to send their troops to the country.
The UK, France and Estonia among European countries considering sending their troops to help keep the peace in postwar Ukraine.
However, Russia‘s Foreign Secretary Sergey Lavrov last week insisted that the Kremlin must have a veto on any futrure security guarantees for Ukraine and said Nato troops in the country would be “unacceptable”.
That message was reiterated by the Kremlin spokesman during a press conference, who again stressed Russia‘s opposition to any presence of Nato forces in Ukraine.
He also added that any future high-level peace talks would need to be well-prepared in advance, thereby in effect ruling out the possibility of a summit between Ukraine and Russia any time soon.
Analysts believe that Vladimir Putin has no incentive at present to sue for peace, as he believes he has the upperhand on the battlefield. They argue that the Kremlin boss is deliberately stalling over peace talks to allow his army to press home their advantage in full.
Putin’s army appears to have made further advances, entering a new administrative region of Ukraine in recent days.
Kyiv acknowledged for the first time on Tuesday that Russia’s army had entered the Dnipropetrovsk region, a central administrative area previously spared from intense fighting. “Yes, they have entered, and fighting is ongoing as of now,” said Viktor Tregubov, a spokesperson for Ukrainian forces in Dnipro, Ukraine’s fourth-largest city.
Putin’s efforts to stall Trump’s peace initiative is likely to increase the US President’s growing frustrations and could lead to punitive actions by the White House.
The US President said once again he wanted to see the war come to an end and threatened to take tough action against the Kremlin.
“We want to have an end. We have economic sanctions. I’m talking about economic because we’re not going to get into a world war,” he told reporters.
His renewed threat of economic sanctions comes as the White House imposed 50% tariffs on most US imports from India, in retaliation for New Delhi’s continuing purchase of Russian oil.
