A United States-led ceasefire agreement in Ukraine does not appear imminent, but Washington’s relationship with Moscow is growing ever warmer, Al Jazeera reported.
Russia and the US focused on bilateral issues in their second round of talks last Thursday, following their opening session in Riyadh nine days earlier, said Al Jazeera in its report.
Russia floated the idea of resuming commercial flights while the US discussed staffing its Moscow embassy. Neither side mentioned Ukraine in their official statements.
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova confirmed on Wednesday that “there are no talks on the situation in Ukraine as yet.”
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, “Some first draft provisions of such potential peace plans are appearing,” but not “a coherent institutionalized peace plan.”
Since the White House debacle during which US President Trump and Vice President JD Vance led a shouting match against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Russia has tried to drive a wedge between the Trump administration and Europe as the continent rushes to support Ukraine and Washington pulls further away.
According to the Doha-based news channel, Zakharova has called French President Emmanuel Macron “detached from reality” in a press conference when he offered to share France’s nuclear deterrent. She referred to Ukraine’s European allies as the “war party”.
She called Zelenskyy’s “dressing down” in the White House a result of the “extreme moral degradation” of the “maniac leader of the Nazi regime.”.party.
Alexander Bastrykin, the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, on Sunday blamed Europeans rather than the US for the military aid provided to Ukraine.
State-owned media should not only sing praises of govt: Ministe...
“The most lethal weapons are supplied by the UK, Canada, Italy, Germany, Romania, Estonia, and several other countries,” he said.
Even as its army claimed the village of Privolnoye in Donetsk on Wednesday, Peskov told reporters, “The Kyiv regime and Zelensky do not want peace. They want the war to continue.”
But Trump was a return to sanity, Russian officials said.
“We all understood that it was not Donald Trump who severed relations, but Joe Biden,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told an interviewer on Sunday, during which he rejected the idea of European peacekeepers.
“They claim to be training thousands of peacekeepers and providing them with air support, which is an audacious stance,” he said of the United Kingdom and France. “First and foremost, no one consults us. President Donald Trump understands the situation fully.”
Peskov told an interviewer on the Rossiya-1 news network, “The new [US] administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations. This largely coincides with our vision.”
Trump has echoed Russian arguments, telling Zelenskyy that Ukraine is not helping to achieve a ceasefire but is instead prolonging the war.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian delegations are working with European allies to increase military aid after another breach of US-Ukrainian relations on Friday led to a military and intelligence cutoff.
“The events of the last week have produced an effect here in Oslo and in other countries,” Inna Sovsun, a Ukrainian member of parliament with knowledge of security and defence matters, told Al Jazeera.
She was in the Norwegian capital as part of a delegation negotiating an increase in military assistance.
“Norway is now considering increasing its support,” she said.
US credibility was also likely to suffer in the Middle East and the Pacific, said the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.
“The Russia-led bloc will likely see the United States abandoning Ukraine as an indicator that the United States will abandon its other allies and will seek to test the limits of US commitment around the world,” the ISW said, referring to Iran and North Korea.
During their fiery exchange, Trump and Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday for being “disrespectful”.
“I’ve empowered you to be a tough guy. I don’t think you’d be a tough guy without the United States … you’re not acting at all thankful, and that’s not a nice thing,” said Trump.
The criticism carried a partisan sting.
“You went to Pennsylvania in October and campaigned for the opposition,” said Vance, referring to Zelenskyy’s appearance with then-President Joe Biden on the campaign trail.
Poland announced a new $200m package of military aid on Thursday.
“Hearing Trump say Ukrainians don’t want peace is unfair,” said Sovsun. “There is nothing I want more than for [my partner] to come home. But I also don’t want my son to go and fight in five years.”
Trump’s administration ‘clearly sides with Russia’
“There is no longer any pretence that the administration clearly sides with Russia,” said retired US General Ben Hodges, who commanded US forces in Europe from 2014 to 2018, according to Al Jazeera.
“This is a huge strategic mistake for the United States because our European allies are going to come together, they are going to help Ukraine either win or at least get to a much better situation, and Europe will have done it without us and despite us and we will have lost great influence and great credibility,” Hodges said.
