The Kremlin is dragging out talks and refusing to make any concessions, Brussels’ most senior envoy said in an apparent break from colleagues, writes Politico.
Russia has no intention of backing down from its brutal war in Ukraine, the EU’s top diplomat said on Saturday, just hours after American President Donald Trump insisted he could be close to brokering a truce.
In a statement shared with POLITICO, Kaja Kallas, the bloc’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, welcomed Trump’s “resolve to get a peace deal” after he held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday.
“But the harsh reality is that Russia has no intention of ending this war anytime soon,” she blasted. “Even as delegations met, Russia launched new attacks on Ukraine. Putin continues to drag out negotiations and hopes he gets away with it. He left Anchorage without making any commitments to end the killing,” Kallas said.
“Moscow won’t end the war until it realizes it can’t continue. So Europe will continue to back Ukraine, including by working on a 19th Russia sanctions package,” Kallas went on, blasting Putin’s claim that Kyiv was responsible for the “root causes” of the war.
“The real root cause of the war is Russia’s imperialist foreign policy, not an imaginary imbalance in the European security architecture,” she said.
The broadside came just hours after top NATO allies were invited to a debrief with the American administration, with Trump having claimed the discussions were “extremely productive.” European leaders swiftly issued a statement in support of the White House’s efforts to secure trilateral negotiations with Putin, Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Ahead of the talks, Latvia’s Prime Minister Evika Siliņa told POLITICO that European countries shared with him “our experience with Russia, including that they often fail to keep promises in the long term, and stressed the need to track every commitment closely.”
Zelenskyy will visit Washington on Monday as part of the White House’s much-vaunted peace process, paving the way for a possible sit-down with Putin as proposed by Trump.