Russia rejects US peace deal for Ukraine and issues new set of demands
Russia 'cannot accept' the peace deal which has been proposed by President Donald Trump to put a stop to the invasion of Ukraine, a top diplomat has said.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said although the nation has taken the ideas put forward by the US 'very seriously', the Kremlin still aren't satisfied with the current terms of the suggested armistice agreement.
He complained that the US aren't taking Vladimir Putin's 'main demand' into consideration - which is believed to be his desire to take control of Ukraine - and this is also one of the 'root causes of the conflict'.
While speaking to Russia's International Affairs magazine, Ryabkov laid out further demands which come on top of a number of controversial requests already made by Russia.
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"We have not heard from Trump a signal to Kyiv to end the war," he told the publication, as per NewsWeek. "All that we have today is an attempt to find a certain scheme that would first allow us to achieve a ceasefire, as it is conceived by the Americans.
"And then move on to some other models and schemes, in which, as far as we can judge, today there is no place for our main demand, namely, the solution of problems related to the root causes of this conflict."
Ryabkov continued: "This is completely absent, and it must be overcome.
"We take the models and solutions proposed by the Americans very seriously, but we cannot accept all this as it is.
"We certainly have a deeply and carefully thought-out set of our own priorities and approaches to this topic, which is being worked out and worked out, including by our negotiating team at the recent talks with the Americans in Riyadh."
It comes just days after Trump admitted he was 'very angry' with Putin due to the comments the Russian leader has made.
Although the pair have generally seemed rather close on the world stage and they've 'always had a good relationship', the US President admitted things are a bit fraught between them at the moment.
He's trying to finally put an end to the war in Ukraine and Putin isn't exactly making the job easy for him.
In an interview with NBC, Trump revealed he was not happy with recent comments made by Putin calling for a transitional government to be put in place in Ukraine in order to hold elections in the country he is invading.
That would essentially kick out current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Ukraine's constitution makes it clear that elections are suspended during wartime anyway.
Ceasefire talks have been progressing and an agreement has been reached over a ceasefire in the Black Sea, but Russia's list of conditions for a full ceasefire threaten to stall an agreement being made.
As such, Trump's attempts to broker a ceasefire have become bogged down and in his interview he said he didn't like Putin's recent comments.
Trump said: "If I feel we're in the midst of a negotiation, you could say that I was very angry, p***ed off, when Putin said yesterday that - you know, when Putin started getting into Zelenskyy's credibility, because that's not going in the right direction."
He went on to say that if Russia didn't agree to a ceasefire, then he would put more tariffs on the country's oil exports.
When asked about the current tension between Putin and Trump, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov yesterday (31 March) described the efforts to hammer out a peace deal with Ukraine as a 'drawn-out process'.
He told reporters: "We are working to implement some ideas in connection with the Ukrainian settlement. This work is ongoing. There is nothing concrete yet that we could and should announce.
"This is a drawn-out process because of the difficulty of its substance."
You can say that again, Peskov.
Topics: Donald Trump, Russia, US News, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Politics
Olivia Burke