Russia ‘will take Trump’s Ukraine peace deal and tell his ambassador to screw himself because we don’t like any of it’, Kremlin hardliner warns as NATO says a bad deal is a threat to US security

Vladimir Putin will reject Donald Trump’s proposed peace plan and would only end the conflict in Ukraine if he makes huge concessions, a hardliner close to the Kremlin has warned.

Russian tycoon Konstantin Malofeyev, who is sanctioned by the West, criticized Trump’s recently elected envoy Keith Kellogg and his proposals on how to end the conflict with Kiev.

“Kellogg comes to Moscow with his plan, we take it and tell him to screw himself because we don’t like it. That would be the whole negotiation,” Malofeev said bluntly in an interview from a luxury resort in Dubai.

Former General Kellogg has called for freezing existing front lines and forcing Moscow and Kiev to the negotiating table – a plan endorsed by Trump, who said they would achieve “peace through strength” together and who has long vowed to to end war. within 24 hours’.

Malofeev has responded by presenting a long list of demands that go beyond Putin’s publicly stated terms for a ceasefire, including Kiev ceding four frontline regions to Russia and agreeing never to join NATO.

The businessman, who has strong influence but no official position in the Kremlin, told the FT that Trump would only have a chance to end the conflict if he reversed the decision to allow Kiev to use ATACMS long-range missiles on Russian territory.

He warned that this had left the world “on the brink of nuclear war” and said Moscow could launch a tactical nuclear weapon if the US fails to reverse its support for Ukraine.

“There will be a radiation zone that no one will ever enter in our lifetime,” he threatened. “And the war will be over.”

Malofeev, who this year married Maria Lvova-Belova, a close Putin ally wanted by the International Criminal Court over the alleged kidnapping of Ukrainian children, also called for the removal of President Volodymyr Zelensky as part of a peace deal.

He added that the talks would not be constructive unless Trump was willing to discuss other global flashpoints with Putin himself and acknowledge that Ukraine is a major concern for the Kremlin.

“We should not talk about the future of Ukraine, but about the future of Europe and the world,” he said.

The new NATO chief revealed yesterday that he had warned Trump that the US would face a “serious threat” from China, Iran and North Korea if Ukraine were pushed to sign a deal on Moscow’s terms.

“We cannot get into a situation where Kim Jong Un and the Russian leader and Xi Jinping and Iran are high-fiving because we have reached an agreement that is not good for Ukraine, because that is not only a serious will be a threat to security, to Europe, but also to the US,” Mark Rutte told the newspaper FT.

Rutte said he made this point in late November during a meeting with newly-elected President Trump, emphasizing that Moscow is already “working closely” with the West’s enemies.

“Look at the missile technology that is now being sent from Russia to North Korea, which poses a major threat not only to South Korea and Japan, but also to the American mainland,” Rutte told Trump.

He added that Iran receives money from Moscow in exchange for missiles and drones, which then support Hamas and Hezbollah in the Middle East.

Rutte also said he claimed that Chinese President Xi Jinping is “watching very carefully what comes out of this” – an apparent reference to Beijing potentially feeling emboldened to pursue its ambitions in Taiwan if Russia is allowed to seize Ukrainian territory.

It comes as Ukraine today called for ‘full’ NATO membership as the only guarantee of security in the face of Russian aggression, ahead of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers.

“We are convinced that the only real security guarantee for Ukraine, as well as a deterrent to further Russian aggression against Ukraine and other states, is Ukraine’s full membership in NATO,” the Foreign Ministry in Kiev said in a statement.

Nearly three years after the invasion, Russian forces are accelerating their offensive, capturing more Ukrainian territory in November than in any month since March 2022, an AFP analysis of data from the US Institute for the Study of War shows.

Putin’s forces today claimed to have captured two more villages during Moscow’s arduous advance.

Meanwhile, Kiev said today that its forces had repulsed a Russian attempt to cross the Oskil River, a key waterway that has long formed a de facto frontline along the eastern frontline.

Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service SVR, said last week that Russia had full strategic initiative on the battlefield.

He added that Russia was open to negotiations, but stated that the Kremlin would “categorically” reject any “freezing” of the current frontline and would demand thatUkraine relinquishes areas in the four Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, which the Kremlin illegally annexed without fully occupying them.

Trump famously said that the war between Russia and Ukraine would never have started if he had been president, claiming he could bring the conflict to an abrupt halt – without ever announcing his plans to do so.

“I can’t give you those plans because if I give you those plans, I can’t use them.”

But Kellogg’s plan to end the war is expected to form the basis for Trump’s approach, especially now that the retired general has been named special envoy.

In his April paper for US think tank America First, Kellogg acknowledged that the solution would be a bitter pill to swallow, but would ultimately be the fastest way to end the bloodshed.

“The Ukrainian government and people will have difficulty accepting a negotiated peace that does not give them back all of their territory or, at least for now, hold Russia accountable for the carnage it inflicted on Ukraine.

“But as Donald Trump said at the CNN town hall in 2023, “I want everyone to stop dying.” That is also our opinion,” the newspaper concludes.