The Kremlin on Tuesday has said that while its stance since Presidents Putin and Trump met in Alaska in August has remain unchanged, European countries are busy seeking to thwart peace efforts.

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a briefing that the European allies are actively encouraging Kiev to keep pursuing a solution militarily. "Right now, Europeans are not really focused on peace and are doing little to achieve it," he said.

Peskov also cited reports from the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service that European NATO members are "continuing extensive preparations for a potential armed conflict with Russia," according to TASS.

In parallel statements Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia's special military operation "is fulfilling its goals" and that "there is no doubt that it will conclude successfully."

He then batted down President Zelensky's current push to freeze the conflict before peace talks can be held. Moscow has long said it is not willing to do a temporary truce, seeing in this a Ukrainian ploy to regroup and rearm before a comprehensive settlement can be achieved.

"An immediate ceasefire, the talk of which has suddenly reappeared, would mean only that a large part of Ukraine remains under the Nazi regime’s control, while the need is to resolve the issue at its core and address its underlying causes," Lavrov stressed.

Zelensky came off his Friday White House meeting with Trump saying that the US President is in agreement with him on this point.

But Lavrov has countered, "I would like to officially stress that Russia has not altered its stance compared to the understandings reached during the Putin-Trump extended talks in Alaska."

He too laid much blame on the Europeans for seeking to sabotage talks, as a meeting is under preparation to be hosted in Budapest between Trump and Putin. Lavrov continued:

The desire of the Kiev regime’s "European patrons" to insist on a ceasefire in exchange for a comprehensive settlement of the Ukrainian conflict runs counter to the agreements reached in Alaska: "This approach contradicts what Presidents Trump and Putin agreed upon in Anchorage, which was to focus on the root causes."

At the moment, President Trump is being widely accused in mainstream media of essentially selling out the Ukrainians and siding with Putin related to potential future terms of a peace settlement:

Behind the scenes, Trump had pushed Zelenskyy to give up swaths of territory to Russia, two people briefed on the discussion told Reuters. “Let it be cut the way it is,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday. “It’s cut up right now,” he said, adding that you can “leave it the way it is right now”.

“They can negotiate something later on down the line,” he said. But for now, both sides of the conflict should “stop at the battle line – go home, stop fighting, stop killing people”.

This would indeed give Russia effective control of some 20% or a little more of Ukraine, and the idea is that the battlelines would be 'frozen' as a more comprehensive deal is hammered out.

Meanwhile MSM is piling on too, with several negative reports on efforts to get Putin and Trump at the table again in Budapest:

"It was also not immediately clear what impact the tabling of the pre-meeting between Lavrov and Rubio would ultimately have on the anticipated Trump-Putin summit in Budapest, Hungary." —CNN

It could be that Trump is finally getting realistic about the conflict - the Russians are not going to pack up and leave the battle lines, and territorial concessions are what will end the war, whether Kiev likes it or not.

Russia seems to be trying to be careful to play nice with Trump and not offend him at this sensitive juncture of Moscow-Washington bilateral talks, while laying all the blame for any stall in negotiations on the more hawkish Europeans.