Russia’s foreign minister has rejected ideas floated by members of the Trump transition team for a negotiated ceasefire in Ukraine, casting doubt that the president-elect will be able to secure a peace deal in his first 24 hours—as he repeatedly claimed on the campaign trail.
Speaking to Russian state-owned wire service TASS, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters that Russia has not received any “official signals regarding a settlement” from the Trump camp—but immediately criticized the ideas he had heard floated in the media.
The Trump transition team has not put out an official outline for what a peace plan would look like, and Trump has refused to provide further details in recent interviews in order to preserve the negotiation process. “When I start exposing that plan, it becomes almost a worthless plan,” the president-elect told Time magazine in an interview in December.
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But details of what the Trump administration plans to offer have slowly circulated. Shortly after his electoral victory in November, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s transition team was discussing a peace deal that would include a promise that Ukraine could not join NATO for 20 years. Earlier in December, sources told the Journal that Trump had spoken with both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron about stationing European troops in Ukraine to monitor a ceasefire.
Lavrov made it clear that Russia was aware of the incoming administration’s proposals.
“Judging from numerous leaks and Donald Trump’s interview with Time magazine on December 12, their idea is to suspend hostilities along the line of contact and transfer responsibility for confrontation with Russia to the Europeans,” Lavrov told reporters.
“We are not happy, of course, with the proposals made by members of the Trump team to postpone Ukraine’s admission to NATO for 20 years and to station British and European peacekeeping forces in Ukraine,” Lavrov continued.
Vice President-elect JD Vance outlined another plan on a podcast interview in September—which would allow Russia to keep the territory it has already occupied, as well as guarantee Ukraine’s neutrality. The foreign minister made no comment on these proposals, which are similar to a plan submitted by Russian President Vladimir Putin in June.
On Monday, Lavrov also said only sitting President Joe Biden has the authority to negotiate with Russia until Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20., and was pessimistic about reestablishing diplomatic dialogue between the U.S. and Russia, even with the changing administration.
It’s not the first time Russian officials have cast doubt on the idea that the conflict, which broke out following a Russian invasion in February 2022, would come to a quick end.
“The Ukrainian crisis cannot be solved in one day,” Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, told reporters in July, shortly after Trump made similar promises during a televised debate with then-Democratic nominee President Joe Biden, Reuters reported.
