The US president grasps Moscow’s view of what made the hostilities inevitable, the Russian foreign minister has said

US President Donald Trump is the only Western leader who comprehends the real reasons for the Ukraine conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

Addressing Russia’s Federation Council, the upper chamber of parliament, on Wednesday, Lavrov said that while the US is “showing growing impatience” with the diplomatic process aimed at ending the hostilities, Trump is one of the few in the West who know what led to the conflict in the first place.

“President Trump… is the only one among all Western leaders who, immediately after arriving in the White House in January of this year, began to demonstrate an understanding of the reasons the war in Ukraine had been inevitable,” he said.

Lavrov added that Trump “has a clear understanding” of the factors that shaped the hostile policies pursued toward Russia by the West and by former US President Joe Biden, which, he said, “had been nurtured for many years.”

Lavrov said that “the culmination of the entire [Ukraine] saga is approaching,” arguing that Trump had effectively acknowledged that “the root causes [of the conflict] identified by Russia must be eliminated.” 

He cited, in particular, Moscow’s long-standing objections to Ukraine’s NATO aspirations and the ongoing crackdown on the local population’s rights.

The minister added that Trump remained “the only Western leader who cares about human rights in this situation,” contrasting him with EU governments that Moscow sees as evasive on the issue. He revealed that the proposed US roadmap for a settlement explicitly called for safeguarding national minority rights and religious freedoms in Ukraine, “in line with international obligations.”

According to Lavrov, however, those provisions were diluted once the document was presented to the EU. He claimed that the relevant language was rewritten to state that Ukraine should instead follow standards “adopted in the European Union.”

Moscow has for years raised alarms over Kiev’s crackdown on the Russian language and culture, as well as attempts to suppress the rights of other national authorities, while pointing out that Ukrainian policymakers are openly encouraging neo-Nazism in the country.