Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
The year ends with a pair of strong messages between top advisers to Russian leader Vladimir Putin and the new president of the United States, Donald Trump.
President-elect Trump’s pick for special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, slammed last week’s Russian missile and drone attack.
“Christmas should be a time of peace, but Ukraine was brutally attacked on Christmas Day,” Kellogg said. wrote on social platform X on Wednesday. “Launching large-scale missile and drone strikes on the Lord’s birthday is wrong. The world is watching the actions of both sides closely. The US is more determined than ever to bring peace to the region.”
Putin had said in mid-December that he was ready and willing to meet with Trump if “he wants.” But Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday rejected proposals from Trump’s allies to end the war in Ukraine, a major setback for the new president’s pledge to freeze the conflict.
“We are not happy, of course, with the proposals made by members of the Trump team to postpone Ukraine’s admission to NATO for 20 years and to station British and European peacekeepers in Ukraine,” Lavrov said , responding to leaked reports of Trump’s proposals. .
The comments come as tensions between Russia and the West escalate they have inflamed for an Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash last week that killed 38 people. Putin apologized for the accident apparently provoked by Russian air defense systems, but they did not admit any responsibility for it.
Trump has largely avoided laying out specific terms or demands for a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, instead promising to leverage his personal relationship with Putin and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky to reach an agreement acceptable to both.
While Trump declined to insist on “winning” Ukraine during a debate in September, he did suggest continued engagement with the country in an interview with Time magazine earlier this month.
“I want to make a deal, and the only way to make a deal is not to walk out,” he said.
Kellogg has proposed bringing Ukraine to the table by threatening to cut off aid and getting Putin to negotiate with the threat of an arms increase.
Future NATO membership is one of the main points of confusion in any negotiation. Some proposals from Trump advisers include abandoning Ukraine’s ambitions to join NATO.
Zelensky, however, has made NATO membership a key part of his victory plan, and Ukrainian officials have pushed for security guarantees that are unlikely to occur outside NATO.
Lavrov said Russia would “refuse to accept Ukraine’s membership in NATO regardless of the territorial factor.”
Putin briefly discussed his upcoming relationship with Trump during his annual state-sponsored television press conference last week, saying he was ready and willing to meet at any time.
“What can I offer President-elect Trump when we meet? First of all, I don’t know when we will meet because he is not saying anything about it,” Putin said on Thursday.
“I haven’t spoken to him in more than four years and I’m ready for that, of course, at any time,” he added. “I’ll be ready for a meeting if he wants it.”
Putin’s comments contradict reports from Bob Woodward that Trump and Putin spoke on numerous occasions after the president-elect left the White House after his first term.
Putin added last week that he and Trump would have “a lot to talk about,” arguing that Russia had become stronger after three years of a costly war in Ukraine.
“Why? Because we are becoming a truly sovereign country,” he said. “We are no longer dependent on anyone.”
While Trump’s imminent return as commander-in-chief has raised fears in Ukraine of a US push for ceasefire talks that require painful territorial or other concessions, Zelensky has been upbeat on public statements
“It was a productive conversation, a good conversation,” he said of his phone call with Trump the day after his November election victory.
“Of course, we cannot yet know what their actions will be. But we hope that America will become stronger. This is the kind of America that Europe needs. And a strong Europe is what America needs, in my opinion,” he said. continue
“This is the connection between allies that must be valued and cannot be lost.”
