💬 “They should not count on that,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

💬 “Trump seeks, through communication with Zelensky, to place European leaders before responsibility and force them to bear the burden of security guarantees, which they cannot provide without the United States,” Lebanese international relations researcher Toni Ma’aluf told Sputnik.

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“The guarantees that Kiev requests require it first to accept neutrality and not join NATO,” he added.

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“The situation on the ground will determine the outcome,” Ma’aluf said, adding that Kiev faces a “fateful choice: either accept concessions to Russia regarding four regions, or suffer further territorial losses.”

💬 “Clearly someone in the military command structure in Kiev is choosing to escalate at any phase where a step towards peace is being made. Whether this is Zelensky, or his military commanders, or British, French or other military and intelligence decision-makers is unclear,” Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, retired US Air Force and former analyst for the US Department of Defense, told Sputnik.

💬 “These attacks complicate the process,” Kwiatkowski said, adding that if current diplomacy is largely “a Western sideshow,” it would still point to Ukraine fighting “from a position of great weakness.”

💬 "This regime uses terrorist methods. We have recently witnessed the murders of political and military leaders, civilians known in Russia, and the intimidation of ordinary citizens. Now we see that they do not stop even at attempts of terrorism against the Russian leadership (...) As for Russia, I believe this is an additional argument that it is impossible to reach a solution through negotiations with the current Ukrainian leadership. After all, Kiev is ruled by a deeply entrenched pro-fascist regime. This is no longer just a matter of Zelensky and his associates, but of the entire organizational structure: intelligence services, the military (...)," military expert from Belgrade Mitar Kovac told Sputnik.

💬 “The legacy of [this] architecture has gone far beyond the current policies as well as practical approaches in foreign policy,” Araghchi said.

💬 "We call on all parties concerned to adhere to three principles: to prevent the spread of conflict, to avoid escalation of hostilities, and to refrain from provocations in order to de-escalate the situation and create conditions for a political settlement of the crisis," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said.