Moscow, Russia - Russia's foreign minister said Tuesday he welcomed signals coming from President-elect Donald Trump over the Ukraine conflict, less than a week before the Republican takes office.

Trump has pledged to bring a swift end to the nearly three-year conflict, raised skepticism over Washington's military support for Kyiv, and sympathized with Moscow's concerns over the NATO military alliance.

Speaking at a press conference in Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, "The very fact that people are starting to talk more about the realities on the ground. It probably deserves being welcomed."

Russia holds almost one-fifth of Ukraine's internationally recognized territory and has claimed to have annexed five of its regions – Crimea in 2014 and the Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk, and Zaporizhzhia regions in 2022.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded Ukraine withdraw from all of them – including significant territory Kyiv's forces still control – as a precondition to peace talks.

Despite backing Trump's public stance, Lavrov said Russia had yet to see any specific proposals on how he intends to bring the two sides to the negotiating table.

"We will wait for concrete initiatives," Lavrov said.

"Once he becomes president, and formulates a definitive position on Ukrainian affairs, of course we will study it," he added.

The Kremlin had not received any proposals from Trump's team for a meeting with Putin, despite Trump saying one was being arranged, Lavrov also said.

Direct talks between the two men would represent a significant change of approach, with President Joe Biden's administration having largely shunned high-level talks with Moscow since the start of the conflict in February 2022.

Lavrov also welcomed Trump appearing to sympathize with Russia's concerns over NATO.

Trump said last week that Biden had taken the decision to let Ukraine join NATO, and that he could "understand [Russia's] feeling about that".

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Lavrov said Tuesday it was the "first time" a Western leader had admitted NATO had "lied" about "promises" not to expand at the expense of Russia's security.

Moscow has long cast the expansion of NATO into central Europe and the Baltics, along with a 2008 memorandum that says Ukraine will eventually join the alliance, as one of the "root causes" of the military conflict.

Kyiv and the West have repeatedly rejected that claim as baseless and say Russia's full-scale military conflict is an illegal imperial-style attempt to seize control of its pro-Western neighbor.