The Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday rejected the latest US-backed offering to end the Russia-Ukraine war, issuing a blistering rebuff that threatens to blow up President Trump’s peace plan.
A terse statement from Moscow’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs slammed the US-European proposal for security assurances for Ukraine, saying the protection plan amounts to “a true axis of war.”
“The document turned out to be extremely far from a peace settlement. The declaration is not aimed at achieving a lasting peace and security but rather at continuing the militarization, escalation and further conflict aggravation,” the ministry claimed.
“Its core element is the deployment of ‘a multinational force’ on Ukrainian territory that the coalition will have to form to contribute to the ‘rebuilding’ of the Ukrainian armed forces and ‘support deterrence’ following the cessation of the hostilities,” it added.
The rebuke comes after Trump’s peace envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner signed onto a five-point plan with European leaders in Paris Tuesday to enhance “security guarantees” for Ukraine if it reaches terms to end Russia’s nearly four-year invasion.
The agreement pledges “critical long term military assistance” to Kyiv, a “European-led” multinational peacekeeping force, additional military aid and sanctions in the “case of a future armed attack by Russia,” as well as “mutually beneficial defence cooperation with Ukraine.”
If the supplemental five-point plan on security guarantees is rejected — which Ukraine has required — then the underlying 20-point peace plan to stop the war is in jeopardy.
Russia also rejected plans to continue Trump’s Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) initiative, which allows Europe to buy US-made weapons to supply Ukraine to deter future Russian aggression.
“The document also includes clauses on further consolidation of Ukraine’s and NATO’s military industrial sectors,” the ministry said.
The rejection deals a blow to Trump’s efforts to build a postwar security framework that would shield Ukraine with NATO-style protections — a plan Moscow claims amounts to locking in Western dominance while leaving Russia exposed, despite it having been crafted to keep Ukraine officially out of the alliance.
“The new militarist declarations of the so-called Coalition of the Willing and the Kyiv regime are forming a true axis of war,” it said. “Its participants’ plans are becoming increasingly more dangerous and destructive for the future of the European continent and its residents, who are also forced by Western politicians to pay for such ambitions out of their own pockets.”
The ministry also said the US seizure of the Bella 1 oil tanker — later renamed the Marinera under a Russian flag — amounted to a flagrant breach of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and a threat to the freedom of navigation at sea.
“The use of force in international waters against a civilian vessel can only be interpreted as a gross violation of fundamental principles and norms,” Moscow’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “… This constitutes a material infringement of the legitimate rights and interests of the vessel owner.”
It also alleged that Trump’s orders risked sparking acute international crises and undermining global maritime norms.
However, the US is not a signatory of UN convention, and Washington holds that it was within its rights to seize the vessel for violating the US blockade of Venezuelan oil ports.
