European foreign ministers are holding emergency talks to discuss their next steps before a meeting between United States President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, as Europe fears Ukraine will be excluded and forced into unacceptable territorial compromises to end the Russia-Ukraine war, now in its fourth year.
In a pre-US-Russia summit push aimed at consensus, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz invited Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the NATO secretary general and several European leaders to a virtual meeting on Wednesday.
The European Union’s top diplomats held a meeting by video link on Monday with their Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Sybiha.
“The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine,” leaders from France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Britain and Finland, and EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said in a joint statement ahead of the call.
Zelenskyy said on Monday that concessions to Moscow would not persuade it to stop fighting and that there was a need to ramp up pressure on the Kremlin. “Concessions do not persuade a killer,” he said.
Zelenskyy insists he will never consent to any Russian annexation of Ukrainian territory nor give up his country’s bid for NATO membership. European leaders have also underscored their commitment to the idea that international borders cannot be changed by force.
The EU has insisted that Kyiv and European powers should be part of any deal. The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said “the US has the power to force Russia to negotiate seriously”, but “any deal between the US and Russia must have Ukraine and the EU included, for it is a matter of Ukraine’s and the whole of Europe’s security.”
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Monday said that the US had pledged to consult with Europe ahead of the summit. “I will wait… for the effects of the meeting between Presidents Trump and Putin – I have many fears and a lot of hope,” he said.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer also expressed support for Trump’s efforts to end the war with Ukraine, as long as the terms for ending the war are not dictated.
“Any peace must be built with Ukraine, not imposed upon it, and we will not reward aggression or compromise sovereignty. Ukraine will decide its own future, and we will support it every step of the way,” he said.
Trump announced last week that he would meet Putin in Alaska on Friday to try to resolve the ongoing conflict. The meeting will be the first between a sitting US and Russian president since 2021.
The US president is reportedly open to inviting Zelenskyy to Alaska, but there has been no confirmation as of yet. Putin has insisted the conditions must be right for him and the Ukrainian leader to meet in person.
Aerial assaults intensifying
In the meantime, aerial exchanges have intensified with diplomatic momentum to end the war in play, with Ukraine claiming to have hit a facility that produces missile components in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region.
Local authorities said one person was killed in the attack and two were wounded. An official told Reuters that at least four drones hit the Arzamas manufacturing plant producing control systems and other components for Russian X-32 and X-101 missiles.
The Russian Defence Ministry said its air defence units destroyed a total of 59 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 12 over the Tula region, as well as over the Crimean Peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014.
The ministry also said its forces had taken control of the settlement of Lunacharske in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, which Ukraine renamed Fedorivka in 2016.
Russia carried out several deadly attacks in various Ukrainian locations over the weekend, including in the fiercely contested areas of Kherson and Zaporizhia.
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