MOSCOW: Russia on Tuesday said that the United States was no longer an "objective mediator" in its efforts to broker an end to the Ukraine war as it blasted Europe's plans to bolster defence spending. US-led talks on ending Europe's deadliest conflict since World War II remain effectively frozen as President Donald Trump has shifted his attention towards the Middle East after ordering strikes on Iran in late February. "As for the United States, judging by their actions, they appear to be abandoning any claim to the role of an objective mediator and are instead pursuing a course of escalating sanctions pressure on Russia," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told foreign envoys in Moscow on Tuesday.
At the G7 summit in France earlier this month, leaders — including Trump — agreed to increase pressure on the Russian "war economy" by strengthening sanctions, including on energy. Since returning to the White House in 2025, Trump — who had pledged he would end the Ukraine war within a day of taking office — has been pushing both sides to engage in negotiations. There has been little progress in the US-brokered shuttle diplomacy, with Kyiv refusing to give in to Moscow's demands to cede territory, limit the size of its army and renounce Western support.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and millions in Ukraine forced from their homes since Russia launched its war in February 2022. In recent months, Moscow has grown increasingly critical of Europe's role in supporting Ukraine and trying to stop Trump from pushing Kyiv to accept a Russia-friendly peace.
Speaking separately on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Europe was "openly" preparing for war through its massive rearmament programme — which is being urged on by Trump. "Now in the West they openly say that they are preparing for war with us, and are increasing their military, offensive budgets," the Kremlin chief told a ceremony of newly-qualified military and law enforcement officials.
In hawkish remarks, he repeated Russia's call for Ukraine to fully withdraw from the eastern Donbas region and said his troops were on the brink of capturing the key fortified town of Kostiantynivka. Putin also said an escalating wave of Ukrainian retaliatory hits on Russian infrastructure was designed to "shake-up society" and was being done with Western support — his first such comments since a massive attack on Moscow set an oil refinery ablaze last week, pouring black smoke over the Russian capital.
Meanwhile, the EU warned on Tuesday that a spiralling diplomatic row between Ukraine and Poland over World War II memory risked benefiting the Kremlin. "There's only one happy observer in this type of situation, and that's the aggressor in Ukraine, and so we shouldn't be playing into their hands," EU spokeswoman Paula Pinho said. "We have confidence in the ongoing discussions that are taking place between Poland and Ukraine and we are confident that indeed this will be solved."
Ukraine on Tuesday announced that President Volodymyr Zelensky will skip the Ukraine Recovery Conference, to be hosted in Poland later this week, amid the spat. Zelensky infuriated neighbouring Poland this month by naming a military unit after the nationalist Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) that took part in massacres against Poles in WWII. Hard-right Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripped Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle — the highest honour in Poland — despite attempts by the country's Prime Minister Donald Tusk to defuse the row. — AFP
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