Russia and its staunch ally Belarus on Friday called for better relations with Washington in messages sent on the US Independence Day.
“I hope that thanks to our joint efforts, relations between our countries … will acquire positive stability and predictability on the basis of mutual respect and consideration of mutual national interests”, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a message.
US President Donald Trump, who has made an unexpected rapprochement with Moscow since his return to the White House in January, acknowledged on Thursday that he had made “no progress” towards ending the conflict in Ukraine, during a new telephone call with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
Kyiv and its Western allies have been calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine for months, but Moscow refuses, believing that a pause in the fighting would give the Ukrainians the opportunity to rearm thanks to Western supplies.
Moscow, which has been conducting a large-scale offensive against Ukraine since February 2022, is demanding that Kyiv cede four partially occupied regions, in addition to Crimea that Moscow annexed in 2014 and renounce efforts to join NATO.
These conditions are unacceptable to Kyiv.
Russia, whose army occupies around 20 percent of Ukrainian territory, regularly insists that any negotiations aimed at ending the conflict must take account of the “realities on the ground”.
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko on Friday meanwhile called for a normalisation of relations between his country, which has been targeted by heavy Western sanctions, and Washington, in a telegram addressed to Trump.
“During your first presidency, Minsk and Washington embarked on the path of normalising relations”, Lukashenko said.
“Unfortunately, at a certain point, Belarusian-American cooperation deviated from this positive line”, he said, adding: “This situation does not correspond to the national interests of either our countries or our peoples”.
“It is time to change it”, said Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994 in Belarus, Ukraine’s neighbour and a key ally of Moscow.
По материалам: http://www.planet-today.com/2025/07/russia-and-key-ally-belarus-seek-better.html