Russia opposes Western peacekeepers in Ukraine 

MOSCOW, Dec 30: Russia is against the deployment of Western peacekeeping troops to Ukraine as part of any settlement to end the nearly three-year conflict, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.

Talk of the possible stationing of foreign troops in Ukraine to enforce any peace deal is circulating in Western capitals, with French President Emmanuel Macron and Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk discussing the issue in a meeting in Warsaw this month.

In an interview published Monday by the Russian foreign ministry, Lavrov told the state-run TASS news agency that Moscow opposed that idea as well as others being proposed by US President-elect Donald Trump.
"Of course, we are not satisfied with the proposals being voiced by representatives of the president-elect to postpone Ukrainian NATO membership for 20 years and to send to Ukraine a peacekeeping contingent of 'British and European forces,'" Lavrov said.    —AFP