Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow would oppose the deployment of Western peacekeeping forces to Ukraine as part of any settlement to end the nearly three-year conflict.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk earlier this month floated the idea of stationing foreign troops to enforce a potential peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

In an interview published Monday by Russia’s Foreign Ministry, Lavrov told the state-run TASS news agency that Moscow opposed that idea, as well as others being proposed by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

“We are not satisfied with the proposals being voiced by representatives of the president-elect to postpone Ukrainian NATO membership for 20 years and to send to Ukraine a peacekeeping contingent of ‘British and European forces,'” Lavrov was quoted as saying.

The Kremlin has previously said it was “too early to talk about peacekeepers.”

Trump, who enters office on Jan. 20, has said he would be able to strike a peace deal within just 24 hours of becoming president.

The U.S. president-elect has yet to propose a concrete plan but members of his team have floated various ideas, including the deployment of European troops to monitor any ceasefire along the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line and a lengthy delay on Kyiv’s ambitions to join NATO.

Both the Russian and Ukrainian presidents have ruled out direct talks with each other, and positions in Kyiv and Moscow appear far apart on what would be acceptable terms for a peace deal.

Russian President Vladimir Putin previously demanded that Ukraine withdraw its troops from four eastern and southern regions that Russia claims to have annexed, while Kyiv has repeatedly ruled out ceding territory to Moscow in exchange for peace.

(C)THE MOSCOW TIMES 2024