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Vladimir Putin’s top diplomat just claimed Europe should not be at the negotiating table at all when it comes to the Ukraine peace talks.
Representatives from the US and Russia are arriving today in Saudi Arabia for what the White House has depicted as preliminary discussions on how negotiations for ending the war should go ahead.
The meeting have caused tension to rise across Europe and Ukraine over their absence from these early talks.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio then tried to ease tensions on Sunday, saying other parties would be involved in any “real negotiations” to end Vladimir Putin’s war – but it seems Moscow has taken the opposite approach.
Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign affairs minister, told reporters he did not see why Europeans should be present at any of the discussions at all.
He said: “I don’t know what they would be doing at the negotiating table. If they are going to ‘beg for’ some cunning ideas about freezing the conflict – while…they really mean continuing the war – then why invite them [Europeans] there?”
Russia’s ambassador to the UN echoed this message when speaking to the security council in New York this afternoon.
Vasil Nebenzya said: “They [Europe] cannot be a party to any future agreement on the resolution to the Ukrainian crisis whatsoever.
“They are blinded by primitive Russophobia, their maniacal desire to inflict defeat on our country, on the battlefield, using the Ukrainians who are left alive.”
The ambassador also called Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “self-proclaimed” president who “dragged the country into conflict”.
It’s coming up to exactly three years to the day since Russia invaded Ukraine in a land grab.
And, while Ukraine has postponed elections during the last three years of bloody war, Putin has been in power since 2000.
But Moscow often blames the west for trying to pull Kyiv into the European sphere of influence, suggesting Russia had no choice but to invade its neighbour and target it with missiles for years.
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