Russia will not accept European peacekeepers, British troops on Ukrainian soil: Russian ambassador to UK

ATHENS 

Russia will not accept European peacekeepers nor British troops on Ukrainian soil, the Russian ambassador to the UK said Thursday.

“It is premature to talk about concessions as part of a peace deal,” Andrey Vladimirovich Kelin told the BBC.

“I find that the British establishment is now in a state of shock and nervousness of what has happened, but what has happened in fact — in reality — this is a more understanding from the American side of what we are doing, why we are doing and what should be the outcome of it,” Kelin said about US President Donald Trump accusing Ukraine of starting the war:

He said Trump is right to say Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is the major obstacle for a peace deal.

Kelin claimed it was Ukraine suppressing the rights of Russian-speaking people in Eastern Ukraine which led to the war.

Also underlining that Russia would not return any Ukrainian territory it occupied as part of a peace deal, he argued that Russia has historical rights on the territories.

Commenting on talks between Russia and the US in the Saudi capital city of Riyadh, Kelin said: “First and foremost, it was the reestablishment of contacts and diplomacy with the US, which is a precondition for everything else. Second, is that they have launched a process, a process, I will say on Ukrainian settlement, which, again, is a very initial phase — what to do with that. And third, that both sides have agreed that we a need full-scale relationship — relationship between the United States and Russia.”

More particularly on how the Kremlin views Trump, Kelin said: “He (Russian President Vladimir Putin) is polite to President Trump, and I understand he respects President Trump for his courage.”

There is already mutual trust between them, he added.

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