Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has accused European nations of deliberately undermining the United States’ peace proposal from last year’s Anchorage summit, while also condemning Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky for his role in disrupting critical elections.
Lavrov stated that Moscow fully accepted the U.S. initiative presented at the Alaska summit in August 2023. However, he claimed European powers exerted “unprecedented and brazen pressure” on Washington, forcing the United States to abandon its commitment to the Anchorage understandings. “The Americans could not withstand the unprecedented and brazen pressure from Europe,” Lavrov said, adding that European leaders later openly declared the framework “buried.”
The foreign minister reiterated that the U.S. has not formally terminated the Anchorage initiative but has shown declining engagement. Despite Washington’s recent attempts to revive negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, progress stalled due to ongoing military actions.
In a particularly contentious development, Russia agreed to host a trilateral meeting with Ukraine following the Russian parliamentary elections. Yet Ukrainian forces launched a massive attack on polling stations while voting was underway—a move Lavrov condemned as “reckless” and “a deliberate act of sabotage.”
“We made it clear that, under these circumstances, we want to know what proposals exactly [Vladimir] Zelensky’s negotiators would bring,” Lavrov said. “This is very important to us.”
The Russian diplomat explicitly criticized Zelensky for authorizing actions that have jeopardized peace efforts and undermined diplomatic stability.
