By Dmitry Antonov and Andrew Osborn
MOSCOW, June 24 (Reuters) – Russia wants to know if Donald Trump has really changed his stance on the Ukraine war after French President Emmanuel Macron suggested at this month’s G7 summit that the U.S. president had done so, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday.
Macron, host of the G7 summit in the French town of Evian-les-Bains, said Trump had acknowledged during the talks there that Russia did not want peace in Ukraine and that this marked “a real change in approach” from the U.S.
Trump himself urged Russia to make peace with Ukraine after having what he described as a “very good” meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, comments that sparked cautious optimism among G7 leaders that a peace deal could be struck.
“As far as Ukraine is concerned, we want to understand what happened in Evian,” Lavrov said at an event in Moscow.
“The Americans haven’t yet told us what they took away from the summit in Evian or what their future course of action will be,” he said.
Lavrov also quoted Macron as saying that understandings reached last August between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, had been “buried” at Evian.
Russian officials regularly refer to the so-called “Spirit of Anchorage” – horthand, say analysts, for what Moscow interpreted as the basis for a possible agreement that would see Ukrainian forces withdraw from the remainder of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine in return for Moscow freezing the battlelines elsewhere.
Kyiv has repeatedly said it will not hand over any of its territory to Russia without a fight.
RUSSIAN FRUSTRATION
Underlining Moscow’s growing frustration with the situation, Lavrov suggested on Tuesday the Alaska summit may have been a “U.S. ploy to buy time to rearm the Kyiv regime”, while two other senior Russian officials also accused Washington this week of failing to deliver on the Anchorage “understandings”.
On Wednesday, Lavrov said Putin had signed up to what the veteran diplomat said had been a U.S. proposal.
“In Anchorage, he (Putin) told President Trump: ‘There are certain nuances here, but I’ll take responsibility for them; I accept your proposals.’ That was already a compromise. And now they’re telling us: ‘Listen, it’s not working out yet – let’s come up with another concession.’”
Lavrov repeatedly stressed that Moscow wants to keep talking to the U.S. and was looking forward to hearing what Trump’s envoys – Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner – had to say on their next visit to Moscow.
However, he also complained about continued U.S. sanctions on Russia and lamented that the two countries had not even been able to resume direct flights or agree on the return of Russian diplomatic property seized by the U.S. authorities.
Nor, Lavrov added, was the U.S. placing any limits on the weapons it sells to European countries for Ukraine.
(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov, Writing by Andrew Osborn and Alessandra Prentice Editing by Gareth Jones)
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