MOSCOW — The Kremlin fired back Tuesday against German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, insisting that any security guarantees for Ukraine would be meaningless without Russia’s direct involvement in crafting them.
Merz had stated Monday that decisions about Ukraine’s future security arrangements — a critical piece of any effort to bring the nearly five-year-old war to a close — should rest with Ukraine and its allies, not with Moscow.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called that position a clear example of the dead-end thinking he says European governments have adopted toward the conflict.
“It is impossible to formulate security guarantees without Russia’s participation; if the Europeans are truly convinced of this stance and insist upon it, this completely rules out the possibility of European countries participating in the settlement process,” Peskov told reporters.
Ukraine has maintained that it needs firm commitments from Western nations to shield it from any future Russian aggression. Russian forces currently occupy roughly one-fifth of Ukrainian territory.
Peskov also weighed in on a separate matter, calling European Union sanctions imposed Monday against the Russian tech company VK — the organization behind Russia’s MAX messaging app — “utterly absurd.”
Critics have long alleged that Russian authorities use the app as a tool for monitoring and surveilling citizens, a claim the Kremlin rejects. Peskov brushed off the sanctions, predicting the app would continue to grow rapidly regardless.
The EU, for its part, stated that VK’s development of MAX amounted to providing “technical support for the repression of civil society and democratic opposition.”
