Russia has called for a United Nations Security Council meeting this week to address what it claims are European efforts to obstruct Ukraine peace negotiations, a senior Russian diplomat said Tuesday.
Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s first deputy UN representative, said the meeting is expected this Friday, one day after the “European sponsors of the Kyiv regime” requested a UN Security Council meeting on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine.
“We requested a meeting in connection with threats to international peace and security due to the actions of a number of European states trying to hinder efforts to resolve the Ukrainian crisis peacefully,” Polyansky wrote on Telegram.
The back-to-back meetings in New York will come two weeks after Russia and Ukraine held their first direct talks since March 2022. The negotiations, held in Istanbul, resulted in both sides exchanging 1,000 prisoners each over the weekend.
The swap took place as Russian missile and drone strikes inflicted some of the deadliest attacks on Ukraine in recent months. U.S. President Donald Trump responded with a rare rebuke, calling Russian President Vladimir Putin “absolutely crazy” and warning of possible new sanctions.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov downplayed Trump’s remarks, saying that emotions are running high amid Ukraine peace negotiations.
On Tuesday, Peskov dismissed U.S. media reports claiming that Trump is weighing new Russia sanctions. He claimed the reports are part of a “campaign aiming to disrupt the peace process” and called Europe an “indirect participant in the war against Russia.”
Polyansky accused Ukraine’s European allies of “risking to misinterpret the preferred tone of the new American administration” while trying to keep the Ukraine war “afloat at the Security Council.”
“The patience of our enemies at the UN, who are waiting for the results of the Istanbul peace talks and President Trump’s reaction to them, seems to have run out,” Polyansky wrote.
At the May 16 talks in Istanbul, Russia and Ukraine had also agreed to prepare a memorandum on a possible future peace agreement.
Ukrainian and European officials have accused Moscow of stalling ceasefire talks and not negotiating in good faith. Russia has rejected the accusations and insists that it has no interest in delaying the peace process.
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