Russia has suddenly demanded clarity from Washington. After the G7 summit in Evian, France, Sergei Lavrov said Moscow did not understand whether Donald Trump had truly changed his approach to the war in Ukraine, as Emmanuel Macron suggested.
For the Kremlin, this is not a minor diplomatic detail, but a sign that it may be losing control over its preferred negotiating framework. Moscow has long operated on the assumption that Trump would seek a fast deal and put more pressure on Kyiv than on Russia.
Macron described a shift in the American position after the G7 talks: Trump, he said, had acknowledged that Russia was not showing a genuine readiness for peace. Trump himself, after meeting Volodymyr Zelensky, urged Russia to reach a peace agreement with Ukraine.
According to Daycom’s assessment, the Russian reaction matters less for its emotion than for its tone. Moscow is no longer speaking in the confident language of strength, but in the language of grievance: as if it had accepted certain proposals, made a compromise, and was now being asked for further concessions.
At the center of that grievance is the so-called “Spirit of Anchorage.” In Russian rhetoric, the phrase refers to supposed understandings that Moscow says were reached between Trump and Vladimir Putin during their meeting in Alaska.
In Russia’s interpretation, that package would have meant Ukraine withdrawing forces from parts of Donbas while Russia froze the front lines elsewhere. For Kyiv, such logic is unacceptable: it would turn aggression into a tool for acquiring territory.
That is why the current dispute is not merely about wording after the G7. It is about who defines the framework for peace. The Kremlin wants to return to a model in which the key parameters of a future agreement are discussed between Moscow and Washington, while Ukraine is left to adjust.
Evian showed a different configuration. European leaders sought to keep Trump aligned with support for Ukraine, sanctions pressure and resistance to Russia’s war economy. For Moscow, that is bad news even without immediate new weapons decisions.
Russia’s negotiating strategy has long rested on the hope of a split between the United States and Europe, allied fatigue over the war and the belief that Trump would seek a quick settlement even if it proved painful for Kyiv.
If the American president publicly accepts that Russia does not want peace, the Kremlin’s room for maneuver narrows. Moscow can no longer so easily present its own rigidity as readiness for compromise, or Ukraine’s refusal of capitulation terms as the obstacle to peace.
That is why Lavrov keeps returning to Anchorage. It is an attempt to freeze the earlier framework almost as an obligation: Putin supposedly accepted American proposals, and now the West should not demand new concessions, but compel Ukraine to accept the old logic.
The problem for Moscow is that the “Spirit of Anchorage” never became an official peace process. It exists primarily in Russian interpretation and functions as a diplomatic anchor to which the Kremlin keeps trying to tie the conversation.
Kyiv’s position is different: peace cannot be built on the transfer of territory under pressure. Ukraine can discuss a cease-fire, security guarantees, prisoner exchanges, the return of deported people and the postwar order, but not the legal recognition of Russian seizures.
This difference explains why Moscow simultaneously speaks of readiness for dialogue and complains about sanctions, arms supplies and European purchases of weapons for Ukraine. For Russia, negotiations are useful only when they reduce pressure on Moscow, not when they raise the cost of the war.
Lavrov also complained that the United States is not limiting weapons sales to European countries for Ukraine, is not lifting sanctions, has not restored direct flights and has not resolved the issue of Russian diplomatic property. That reveals Moscow’s broader demand: concessions over Ukraine should be accompanied by normalization with Washington without any change in Russian behavior.
For Trump, the situation is also complicated. His political style leans toward big deals and personal diplomacy. But the war in Ukraine does not fit the format of a quick handshake. Any concession to Russia would carry consequences not only for Kyiv, but for the entire European security order.
The G7 summit appears to have changed the atmosphere at least partly. Europeans saw an opportunity to keep the United States within a common line, Kyiv gained additional diplomatic space, and Moscow found a new reason to worry. But a change in tone does not yet mean a change in policy.
That is why the Kremlin is asking for explanations. It wants to know whether this is rhetoric after a successful meeting with Zelensky, or a deeper revision of the American line. For Moscow, the difference is critical: one can be waited out; the other must be accounted for.
The most important point is that Russia, for the first time in a long while, looks less like the side dictating the negotiating stage and more like the side trying to determine whether the rules have changed without its consent. That is the weak spot of Kremlin diplomacy: it works only when others accept its starting conditions.
After Evian, Moscow is trying to save the old formula: the United States negotiates with Russia, Ukraine accepts reality, and Europe adjusts. But if Trump has truly moved closer to the conclusion that Putin is not seeking peace, that formula begins to crack. And that crack now frightens Lavrov more than any diplomatic quotation.
