Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lauded US President Donald Trump on Wednesday for saying that previous US support of Ukraine's bid to join the NATO military alliance was a major cause of the war in Ukraine.
Trump has said that he saw no way that Russia could have allowed Ukraine to join NATO, and blamed former Democratic President Joe Biden for allegedly changing the US position on NATO membership for Ukraine.
"He is the first, and so far, in my opinion, the only Western leader who has publicly and loudly said that one of the root causes of the Ukrainian situation was the impudent line of the previous administration to draw Ukraine into NATO," Lavrov told lawmakers.
"No Western leaders had ever said that, but he had said it several times. This is already a signal that he understands our position when President (Vladimir) Putin," Lavrov said.
Russia's demands from NATO
Amid talks with the United States in Riyadh on Tuesday, Russia demanded NATO scrap its 2008 promise to one day give Ukraine membership of the US-led alliance and dismissed the idea that NATO member forces could be keepers of the peace under some sort of ceasefire deal.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Trump is trapped in a disinformation bubble and that he would like his US counterpart's team to have "more truth" about Ukraine. He made this statement after a false claim by Trump about his popularity rating being at 4%.
Zelensky, whose trust rating stands at 57% according to a Kyiv pollster, said attempts to replace him would not work, a day after Trump accused him of starting the war with Russia and said he was broadly unpopular with the Ukrainian people.
"As we are talking about 4%, we have seen this disinformation, we understand it's coming from Russia," Zelenskiy told a news conference broadcast on Ukrainian television.
"President Trump...unfortunately lives in this disinformation space," he added. "Around Trump there is a disinformation bubble."
French government spokeswoman Sophie Primas said on Wednesday, when asked about US President Donald Trump's comments that suggested Ukraine was to blame for its invasion by Russia and the resulting war, that France did not understand the logic of the American comments.