Summary
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that Russia rejects a weak ceasefire in Ukraine, instead seeking a legally binding peace deal ensuring the security of Russia and its neighbors.
Lavrov accused the West of using truces to re-arm Ukraine and called for agreements preventing future violations.
President Putin expressed readiness for talks with Trump but ruled out territorial concessions or Ukraine’s NATO membership, a key Russian concern.
Ukraine remains committed to pursuing NATO membership despite Russia’s objections.
Your security was not an issue until you invaded Ukraine. You didn’t want NATO on your border (even though it already was there in Kaliningrad)? Now you have it.
No one was talking about Finland joining NATO until you invaded Ukraine. Ukraine itself wasn’t pursuing NATO membership until you invaded.
“Now that I’m done beating the shit out of you, what guarantee do I have that you won’t fight back, because that would just be mean”
Also Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Canada (if you don’t count the Arctic).
The idea that Ukraine joining NATO made any kind of difference to Russia’s security is absolutely ludicrous.
Nevermind the fact that annexing Ukraine would also have moved their border to NATO.
Yeah, exactly.
It genuinely worries me that people struggle to see through bullshit this obvious.
Literally nobody who isn’t just a Russian troll is confused by this.
No, sadly I’ve seen a lot of well meaning leftists get caught up in this bullshit. Not denying that Russian trolls have been intentionally spreading their talking points, but I’ve also seen them repeated by far too many people who should know better.
People you know in real life?
IRL and online. It happens way too often.
A big part of it is that a lot of modern leftists were kind of forged in the post 9/11 culture and the reaction against Bush’s forever wars, and they in turn inherited much of their political conscience from elder leftists who were forged in the Nixon years and the reaction against the Vietnam war.
So its become a kind of fait a complit on the left that being anti-war and anti American Imperialism is always good and necessary. And those are good positions to hold, but the problem is that people don’t come to them through interrogative thought. They’re just sort of handed to you as part of your welcome package. So when presented with a scenario where supporting the continuation of a military conflict - even when that support aligns you with the interests of US global influence - is actually a moral good, a lot of these people really struggle to break free of their own thought terminating cliches.
The Ukraine conflict simply does not fit into the same boxes that they’re used to sorting ideas into, and because, by and large, most leftists detest war on a purely moral level (understandable, no one should be overjoyed at the notion of vast destruction of human life, though a depressingly large number of people are) they simply haven’t spent enough time interrogating these ideas to have built a framework to handle complex cases like this.
Russia very carefully frames their propaganda to exploit these moral conflicts. NATO is a military alliance, ergo “NATO bad”. America is an imperialist power, ergo anything that serves American interests is bad. Military conflicts lead to unacceptable loss of life, ergo anything which prolongs a conflict is bad. These are easy answers to complicated problems, so people naturally latch onto them.
That was just the excuse. Ukraine is a mineral-rich breadbasket. They had stuff Russia wants. Simple as that. Just like the US invading Iraq had nothing to do with “spreading democracy”.
Russia’s security wasn’t at issue but the regime’s security was. Russia is like the regimes from 1984: they need constant external threats to wage war against in order to distract the opposition at home.