Russia will not make any concessions at all on the status of Donbass, Novorossiya or Crimea, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said in an interview with ABC News on December 16, reiterating Moscow’s uncompromising position on the territorial issues at the heart of the ongoing peace deal talks.

Ryabkov led the diplomatic talks with the US in January 2022 ahead of the invasion of Ukraine and insisted that the West offer “ironclad guarantees” that Ukraine never joins Nato. In this interview he again laid out a hard line, saying that the Kremlin will not make any concessions on the question of territory.

“We are not able in any form to compromise on this, because it would be, in our view, a revision of a very fundamental element of our statehood, set forth through our constitution,” he said.

He also rejected the possibility of any Western military presence in Ukraine, including under Nato auspices.

“We are open-minded in terms of what decisions might be made. We definitely will not at any time subscribe to, agree to, or even be content with, any presence of Nato troops on Ukrainian territory,” he said.

Following the Berlin meeting on December 14-15, the E3 (France, Britain and Germany) leaders are suggesting that Ukraine beef up its standing army to 800,000 men, making it three times larger than the next largest European army, and European peacekeepers are stationed in a post-war Ukraine – both points that will be unacceptable to the Kremlin.

The Kremlin has made it clear it prefers the 27-point peace plan (27PPP) version of the peace deal thrashed out between the US envoys and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a Moscow meeting on December 3 that calls for Ukraine to give up the Donbas and Crimea and does not mention peacekeepers.

Ryabkov added that Moscow remains open to dialogue but stressed that expectations in Kyiv and among its European partners of a change to the US peace proposal were misguided. “They expect a deep and very wrong revision,” he said.

Regarding broader negotiations, Ryabkov said Russia was “appreciative” of efforts by the administration of US President Donald Trump to seek a resolution to the war.

“We want to finish this on the premise that is sufficient to the sides that are involved,” he said, adding that Russia remains uncertain about the progress made at recent talks in Berlin involving Ukrainian, American and European delegations. “We have no idea what transpires there,” he said.

Ryabkov affirmed that Russia continues to uphold the outcomes of the meeting between President Vladimir Putin and President Trump at the Alaska summit on August 15 where the two presidents worked out a wireframe peace deal on Ukraine, although few details of this agreement have been released.

“We stand firm on the understandings reached [in Alaska],” he said.

Despite sharp tensions, Ryabkov described the current US-Russia diplomatic climate as “measured.”

“I think it is sober, and, if you wish, a cool environment where people listen to one another, stick their heads together in order to try to find a way forward,” he said.