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Russia will seek guarantees that Nato will exclude Ukraine from membership and that Ukraine will remain neutral in any peace deal, a Russian deputy foreign minister said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We will demand that ironclad security guarantees become part of this agreement,” Alexander Grushko told Russian media outlet Izvestia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Part of these guarantees should be the neutral status of Ukraine, the refusal of Nato countries to accept it into the alliance,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It comes as US President Donald Trump has said he will speak to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, as talks continue over a possible ceasefire in the three-year war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking on Air Force One on Sunday evening, Trump said: “A lot of work’s been done over the weekend. We want to see if we can bring that war to an end.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We will be talking about land. We will be talking about power plants,” Trump said when asked about concessions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump added that he was already discussing “dividing up certain assets” between Russia and Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The US and Ukraine have agreed to propose a 30-day ceasefire to Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While Putin said that he supported a ceasefire, he also set out a list of tough conditions for achieving peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the areas of contention is Russia’s western Kursk region, where Ukraine launched a military incursion last August and captured some territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Putin has claimed Russia is fully back in control of Kursk, and said Ukrainian troops there “have been isolated”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He has also raised numerous questions about how a ceasefire could be monitored and policed along the frontline in the east.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Putin of trying to “sabotage” diplomatic efforts<\/a> to secure an immediate ceasefire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n US envoy Steve Witkoff, who met with Putin on Thursday in Moscow, earlier declined to answer a question on how Russian-occupied land in Ukraine could be addressed in a potential deal, during an interview with CNN. Russia currently controls around a fifth of Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During his election campaign, Trump repeatedly promised to end the war, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour in 2022, on “day one” of a new administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n