Trump is a pragmatist and Europe the crucible of war, says Lavrov

Moscow — Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov on Sunday praised US President Donald Trump’s “common sense” aim to end the war in Ukraine, but accused the European powers which have rallied around Kyiv of seeking to prolong the conflict.

Lavrov said the US still wanted to be the world’s most powerful country and that Washington and Moscow would never see eye to eye on everything, but that they had agreed to be pragmatic when interests coincided.

President Vladimir Putin’s foreign minister of 21 years said the model of the US-China relationship was the one that should be built between Russia and the US to do a lot of “mutually beneficial things” without allowing disagreements to collapse into war.

“Donald Trump is a pragmatist,” Lavrov told the Russian military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda, according to a transcript released by the foreign ministry. “His slogan is common sense. It means, as everyone can see, a shift to a different way of doing things.”

“But the goal is still MAGA (Make America Great Again),” Lavrov said, referring to Trump’s political slogan. “This gives a lively, human character to politics. That’s why it’s interesting to work with him.”

Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 with thousands of troops, triggering the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the depths of the Cold War.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution and Russia annexed Crimea, with Russian-backed separatist forces fighting Ukraine's armed forces.

The West and Ukraine describe the 2022 invasion as an imperial-style land grab by Putin and Kyiv has vowed to defeat Russia on the battlefield, though Russian forces control nearly one-fifth of Ukraine.

Putin casts the conflict in Ukraine as part of an existential battle with a declining and decadent West which he said humiliated Russia after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 by enlarging the Nato military alliance and encroaching on what he considers Moscow’s sphere of influence, including Ukraine.

Europe of ‘tragedies’

Trump, who spoke to Putin on February 12 and said he wanted to be remembered as a “peace maker”, has upended US policy on the Ukraine war. Lavrov said that the call with Putin had been at Trump’s initiative.

Trump said last week that the war could develop into World War 3, that he had spoken to Putin on “numerous occasions” and that he thought that there would be a deal on Ukraine peace.

On Friday, he and vice-president JD Vance clashed with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office. Trump accused Zelensky of disrespecting the US, said he was losing the war and had no cards left.

European leaders leapt to Zelensky’s defence.

But Lavrov criticised Europe, saying that for the past 500 years Europe had been the crucible of “all the tragedies of the world” including colonisation, wars, crusaders, the Crimean War, Napoleon Bonaparte, World War 1 and Adolf Hitler.

“And now, after (former US president Joe) Biden’s term, people have come in who want to be guided by common sense. They say directly that they want to end all wars, they want peace,” Lavrov said.

“And who demands a ‘continuation of the banquet’ in the form of a war? Europe.”

Lavrov also dismissed European ideas for sending in a contingent of European peacekeepers and said Russia had no trust in Ukraine after the collapse of the Minsk agreements, which were designed to end a separatist war by Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine.

Europeans, Lavrov said, could not explain what rights Russian speakers would have under the European peacekeeper plans, adding that Russia did not like the idea of Europeans propping up Zelensky.

“Now they also want to prop him up with their bayonets in the form of peacekeeping units. This will mean that the root causes will not disappear,” Lavrov said.

Reuters