“According to analysts, Kremlin officials in the Russian information space are beginning to more directly accuse US President Donald Trump of obstructing peace talks in Ukraine”, — write: www.radiosvoboda.org
ISW points to an interview Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov gave to the Hungarian YouTube channel Ultrahang, in which he said the Kremlin was ready to work with the US to end the war based on preliminary discussions ahead of a bilateral summit in Alaska in August 2025, but accused the Trump administration of abandoning talks. Lavrov also said that Russian President Vladimir Putin was still willing to meet with Trump, but that the Kremlin would wait for Washington to initiate further talks.
According to analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, Lavrov is trying to shift the blame for Russia’s reluctance to compromise, unfairly accusing the Trump administration of being an obstacle to peace. Lavrov also used the interview to push several standard Russian narratives that seek to sow discord between the US and Europe and deprive Ukraine of support from its Western partners, and accused European powers of obstructing the peace process by pressuring Trump.
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According to ISW, other Russian officials and voices in the news space have reinforced similar narratives, including direct criticism of Trump.
“The Kremlin has reinforced these different rhetorical lines in both the Russian and international news spaces after US officials recently canceled a meeting in Budapest and imposed new sanctions against Russia’s energy sector. The Kremlin is likely seeking to push the US into a bilateral rapprochement and lift recent economic sanctions against Russia. The Kremlin is likely also seeking to justify its refusal to compromise and negotiate an end to the war to a Russian domestic audience,” the report said.
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Kremlin officials continue to reject Trump’s proposed ceasefire, while reaffirming Russia’s commitment to its original war aims.
ISW, in particular, draws attention to the fact that the first deputy chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee on International Affairs, Oleksiy Chepa, claimed that the Russian Federation would agree to a ceasefire only if the West stopped supplying Ukraine with weapons and if Ukraine withdrew its troops from the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions – essentially repeating some of Russia’s demands for an end to the war as a precondition for a ceasefire.
Analysts add that the Kremlin’s claims to the territory of all of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions undermine other Russian offers to return territory in southern Ukraine instead of all of Donetsk region, and the Kremlin’s constant references to Odesa, which Russian officials call a “Russian” city, demonstrate Russia’s territorial ambitions even beyond the borders of the four illegally annexed regions.
The American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has repeatedly stated in its reports that the Kremlin is demonstrating its own reluctance to engage in good faith negotiations to end the war against Ukraine and is creating the conditions to shift the blame for the lack of progress to the EU and the West, even as Russia continues to pursue its maximalist war goals.
On October 22, US President Donald Trump announced that the meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest was canceled. “It just didn’t feel right to me. It didn’t feel like we were going to achieve what we needed to achieve. So I canceled it, but we will do it in the future,” he said.
Answering questions from reporters, Trump said that “the time has come” to tighten sanctions against Russia. Shortly before that, the US Treasury Department announced sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil, as well as their subsidiaries.