Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has commended US President Donald Trump for attributing the Ukraine conflict to efforts to bring Kyiv into the NATO military alliance.
Trump has consistently blamed the conflict on his predecessor, Joe Biden, stating that the nearly three years of fighting would “never have started” if he had been president in 2022.
Lavrov noted that Trump is the first, and so far, the only Western leader to openly declare that one of the root causes of the Ukrainian crisis was the previous administration’s aggressive push to integrate Ukraine into NATO. These remarks came after a meeting between US and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia, marking the first high-level talks between the two nations in over three years.
Trump’s diplomatic stance towards Russia has raised concerns in Ukraine, which fears being excluded from future peace talks and forced to make major concessions to end the conflict. Since taking office last month, Trump has significantly altered US foreign policy, making continued support for Ukraine contingent on access to its rare minerals and aligning with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s views on the conflict.
In a press conference held before his inauguration in January, Trump directly blamed Biden’s efforts to admit Ukraine into NATO for sparking the war.
