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WASHINGTON — While President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky work to set up a bilateral Russia-Ukraine summit, Moscow is making new demands that could cancel out the White House’s recent successes in seeking an end to the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II.
Moscow’s latest foot-dragging includes demands for veto power over security guarantees the US and Europe would provide Kyiv — and specific conditions for a summit between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders.
Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed Wednesday that Kremlin tyrant Vladimir Putin only agreed to thinking about “raising the level of heads of delegations” from previous talks in Istanbul — if certain requirements are met.
The talks would have to be “honest,” Lavrov said, adding that a one-on-one showdown between Putin and Zelensky would have to be a “period” at the end of talks, and not “make negotiations worse.”
The demands blunt the impact of two major wins Trump achieved in his back-to-back meetings with Putin in Alaska on Friday and with Zelensky and top European leaders at the White House on Monday.
US allies celebrated Trump’s proclamation that he had gotten Putin to finally agree to an in-person meeting with Zelensky, as well as agreement on the presence of “NATO-like” forces in Ukraine to enforce terms of a possible peace deal.
Trump, 79, and Zelensky, 47, want Putin, 72, to meet with Kyiv’s president for talks in a matter of weeks and have discussed possible locations for such a summit.
Lavrov also said Wednesday Russia wants one aspect of conversations with Ukraine to include the “political” aspects of any deal, but did not clarify what he meant.
How Kyiv responds to the mystery proposal — which Lavrov said Trump would relay — will be an “important step” to bringing about a meeting of more senior Russian leaders with their Ukrainian counterparts and settling “key questions,” the Russian foreign affairs minister claimed.
Lavrov also took issue with Trump and European leaders discussing possible security guarantees for Ukraine without Russia’s involvement, arguing that without Moscow, such talks are a “road to nowhere.”
“We cannot agree with the fact that now it is proposed to resolve questions of security, collective security, without the Russian Federation. This will not work,” Lavrov told reporters. “I am sure that in the West and above all in the United States they understand perfectly well that seriously discussing security issues without the Russian Federation is a utopia, it’s a road to nowhere.”
Special presidential envoy Steve Witkoff — who attended the discussion between Putin and Trump on Friday — claimed Sunday that Russia’s agreement to “NATO-like security guarantees” that would prevent Moscow from re-invading post-peace settlement was a done deal.
“We got to an agreement that the United States and other nations could effectively offer Article 5-like language to cover a security guarantee,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday.
Witkoff added the proposal was offered to Russia as a compromise, allowing Ukraine to have NATO-like protections while respecting the Kremlin’s desires that Kyiv not formally join the Atlantic alliance.
”Putin has said that a red flag is NATO admission, right? And so what we were discussing was — assuming that the Ukrainians could agree to that and could live with that … we were able to win the following concession: that the United States could offer Article 5-like protected, which is one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants to be in NATO,” he said.
“So we sort of were able to bypass that and get an agreement that the United States could offer Article 5 protection, which was the first time we had ever heard the Russians agree to that.”
But instead of sticking with the compromise Wednesday, Lavrov tried to resurrect an old negotiation from the Joe Biden presidency that proposed the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — including US adversaries Russia and China — as Ukraine’s security guarantors.
He called the draft — presented in Istanbul in 2022 — a “very good example” of what Russia is looking for in security guarantees for Ukraine.
European leaders have pushed back on that proposal, pointing out that Ukraine cannot be expected to trust a security guarantee that hinges on the participation of its aggressor.
“Trusting Russia to prevent Russia from reinvading is a logical fallacy,” a European official told The Post.
“Unfortunately, this is not very surprising, considering that Putin has always tried to avoid any serious peace talks,” another European diplomat said. “That is why we need to continue pursuing a peace-through-strength approach with Russia.”
Monday’s White House meeting included the leaders of the European Commission, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, NATO, and the United Kingdom as well as Trump and Zelensky.
No security guarantees have been officially proposed, but Trump indicated Tuesday morning the US could supply Kyiv with air protection.
There would be no US boots on the ground, the president said during an interview with “Fox & Friends.” European countries, including France and the UK, have previously offered to send their troops to be peacekeepers in Ukraine and deter further Russian aggression.
On Wednesday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Cain hosted his military counterparts from France, Finland, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom to discuss the form of any security guarantees, according to a US official.
Zelensky, meanwhile, told reporters Monday that Ukraine would want agreements from Europe to maintain a “strong” military, allow the US buy battle-tested Ukrainian-made drones, and buy $90 billion worth of US weapons with the help of NATO.
Lavrov said he took issue with the attempts to provide Ukraine with protection, saying the Zelensky-Putin bilateral meeting should not be marred by attempts from European leaders to get the US to “strengthen Ukraine.”
“The Russian president has repeatedly said that we are ready to work in any format, provided that the work is honest and does not boil down to attempts — as the leaders of leading European countries are doing — to create conditions that would drag the US into an aggressive, belligerent campaign to preserve and strengthen Ukraine as a tool to contain Russia and wage war against Russia and everything Russian in the region, including Ukraine,” he said.
“President Trump and his national security team continue to engage with Russian and Ukrainian officials towards a bilateral meeting to stop the killing and end the war,” a White House official told The Post Wednesday. “As many world leaders have stated, this war would have never happened if President Trump was in office. It is not in the national interest to further negotiate these issues publicly.”
