Interviewed by Russia’s VGTRK station on Aug. 19, Tuesday morning, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov assured listeners that “the atmosphere was quite good” in the meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska—and distinctly different from the White House meeting of the seven European “leaders” who went to Washington as a “support group” for Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Alaska “was a useful conversation. It showed without any doubt,” he said, “first, that the U.S. leader and his team are sincere in their commitment to achieving tangible results by bringing about something lasting, durable, and sustainable. This is what sets them apart from the Europeans who, at the time, shouted at every corner that they would not accept anything but a ceasefire, while continuing to supply weapons to Ukraine even after it is declared.”
Second, it showed that President Trump and his team understand that the Ukraine conflict “has its causes, which means that all the speculation alleging that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked,” as some Presidents and Prime Ministers of Europe say, “is just baby talk.”
President Trump and his team, particularly since the Alaska summit, “have adopted a far more substantive approach to resolving the Ukrainian crisis, recognizing the imperative to address its root causes,” Lavrov said. He cited two root causes. First, the five waves of NATO’s eastern expansion, despite such official commitments as the OSCE’s assertion that “security is indivisible and no one may strengthen their own security at the expense of others”—which NATO violated. European leaders talked in Washington about Ukraine’s security—and Starmer of Europe’s—but not one spoke of Russia’s security, Lavrov noted.
