Russia won’t accept Nato troops in Ukraine, Lavrov says after talks with US

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said his country won’t accept peacekeeping forces from Nato countries in Ukraine under any peace deal, following high-level talks with the US in Saudi Arabia.

“Any appearance by armed forces under some other flag does not change anything. It is of course completely unacceptable,” he said.

Russia and the US said they had agreed to appoint teams to start negotiating the end of the war.

“Today is the first step of a long and difficult journey, but an important one”, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said following the meeting.

Ukraine was not invited to the talks, which its president Volodymyr Zelensky said was a “surprise”.

But US President Donald Trump said he was “disappointed” by Ukraine’s reaction.

Speaking to reporters at Mar-A-Lago, he was asked by the BBC what his message was to Ukrainians who might feel betrayed.

“I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat, well, they’ve had a seat for three years and a long time before that. This could have been settled very easily,” he said.

After the meeting between US and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia, Trump said he was “much more confident”.

“They were very good. Russia wants to do something. They want to stop the savage barbarianism.”

“I think I have the power to end this war,” he said.

Asked about the prospect of European countries sending troops to Ukraine, he said: “If they want to do that, that’s great I’m all for it.”

The meeting in Riyadh was the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Russian and American delegations are known to have met face-to-face.

At the talks were US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, as well as Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov and the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriev.

Afterwards, Lavrov said the US and Russia would appoint ambassadors to each other’s countries as soon as possible and create conditions to “restore co-operation in full”.

“It was a very useful conversation. We listened to each other, and we heard each other,” he said.

He reiterated Russia’s previous position that any expansion of the Nato defence alliance – and Ukraine joining it – would be a “direct threat” to Russia.

Rubio meanwhile said he was “convinced” Russia was “willing to begin to engage in a serious process” to end the conflict.

“There has to be concessions made by all sides. We’re not going to predetermine what those are.”

European leaders held a hastily-arranged meeting in Paris on Monday to discuss their response to the apparent rapprochement between Russia and the US under President Trump – but did not agree a unified position.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said any Ukraine deal would require a “US backstop” to deter Russia from attacking its neighbour again and said he would consider deploying UK troops to Ukraine.

But Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a key Nato ally, said for his part, discussing sending troops to Ukraine at present was “completely premature”.

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk also said he does not intend to send troops, and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni – the only European leader to attend Trump’s inauguration – expressed doubts.

She told the meeting in Paris that deploying European troops would be “the most complex and the least effective” way of securing peace in Ukraine.

In Riyadh, Rubio said the European Union was going to “have to be at the table at some point because they have sanctions as well that have been imposed”.

On the absence of Ukraine at the meeting, he insisted “no one is being side-lined”.

“Everyone involved in that conflict has to be OK with it, it has to be acceptable to them,” he added.

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky looked visibly tired and upset when he gave his reaction to the meeting during a news conference in Turkey.

“We want everything to be fair and so that nobody decides anything behind our back,” he said.

“You cannot make decisions without Ukraine on how to end the war in Ukraine.”

He will be alarmed by all the smiles on both American and Russian faces in Riyadh, but he will know that he can do little to change whatever they agree on over his head.

The Ukrainian president will also know that his country’s chances of resisting – let alone defeating – Russian troops without American help are very slim.