Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
The Russian foreign minister also ruled out any ceasefire, insisting Moscow will not give Kyiv time to rearm.
At the close of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia summit in Azerbaijan on Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov took the microphone and used it to drive a wedge between the White House and Kyiv.
The main target of the Baku remarks was not NATO or Brussels, but Volodymyr Zelensky personally.
Zelensky painted as the obstacle to Trump
Lavrov seized on Kyiv’s opposition to the Washington-Moscow diesel arrangement, which eases US sanctions on Russian diesel exports, with Moscow saying the fuel will help stabilize global oil markets.
“This is a direct challenge, and a rude one, to President Trump, who actively supported this deal and publicly spoke about it more than once,” Lavrov said, according to Azerbaijani state news agency APA.
Lavrov went further, putting words in Zelensky’s mouth to caricature the Ukrainian position. As relayed by Türkiye Today, Lavrov summarized Kyiv’s stance as: “Don’t pester me with this diesel deal, better give me missiles for the Patriot system, I need to continue hitting the Russian energy sector.”
He accused Zelensky of behaving as if “the whole world owes him, while he is not obliged to do anything for anyone in return.”
Shuts door on ceasefire
Lavrov also flatly ruled out any pause in the fighting, dismissing the prospect of a truce while Western weapon supplies continue to reach Kyiv.
“There will be no ceasefire for him to come to his senses and rearm Ukraine,” Lavrov said, as reported by Türkiye Today.
Last weekend US President Donald Trump announced an energy ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia. None of the parties officially confirmed the deal, and Russia has repeatedly targeted Ukrainian energy infrastructure in strikes during the week.
Western plans “move us further away” from peace
Lavrov also closed the door on current peace proposals circulating in Western capitals, framing them as a drift away from what he said Trump and Vladimir Putin agreed at their August 2025 summit in Anchorage, Alaska.
“After Anchorage, there has been a constant retreat of Western initiatives and ideas toward positions that only move us further away from a sustainable peace, or at least from a negotiated solution,” Lavrov said, as quoted by the Kyiv Post.
Washington has repeatedly denied that any formal agreement was reached between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin at the Anchorage summit in August 2025.
On elections in Ukraine, long a Kremlin demand, he claimed Zelensky “has openly stated that he is not interested in elections and has deliberately put forward unacceptable conditions.”
Russia, Lavrov added, has not formally received the latest US-European peace plan, and Moscow’s war aims are unchanged. Nasha Niva reported his line on whether the Kremlin might soften its position if Kyiv did hold a vote: “We will not speculate.”
