US-Russia Talks 'Crack' Over Lavrov's Ukraine Remarks

Negotiations between Russia and the US have "cracked" due to Lavrov's statements about security guarantees for Kyiv, Bloomberg reports.

According to the agency's source, the Kremlin may be trying to convince Donald Trump to stop demanding security guarantees for Ukraine and to lower the level of the Moscow-Kyiv meeting (the White House insists on a meeting at the presidential level) to avoid new sanctions from the US.

Several senior European officials and diplomats, on condition of anonymity, told Bloomberg that they view Lavrov's statements as an attempt to delay the process. They expressed doubts that Putin is ready to make a deal.

As a reminder, on August 21, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that the deployment of a military contingent from Western countries on Ukrainian territory is unacceptable for Russia.

He also said that for a Putin-Zelenskyy meeting, everything needs to be "well worked out" and "the issue of the Ukrainian president's legitimacy must be resolved."