Europeans plan Ukraine talks with Trump before he meets Putin
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has invited the French, British and other European leaders and the EU and NATO chiefs to the virtual talks, his spokesman said, amid fears across Europe that any deal made without Ukraine could force unacceptable compromises.
Merz's office said yesterday the video conference in various rounds of talks would discuss 'further options to exert pressure on Russia' and 'preparation of possible peace negotiations and related issues of territorial claims and security'.
French President Emmanuel Macron's office said he and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer were also involved in planning Wednesday's meeting of the 'coalition of the willing'.
Trump and Putin will meet in the US state of Alaska on Friday to try to resolve the three-year war but the European Union has insisted that Kyiv and European powers should be part of any deal to end the conflict.
Trump said yesterday he expected the meeting with Putin to be 'constructive' and expressed unhappiness with Zelensky for ruling out territorial concessions to Russia.
'I'm going to speak to Vladimir Putin and I'm going to be telling him 'you've got to end this war,'' Trump said at a White House press conference.
As EU foreign ministers began an emergency meeting on Ukraine yesterday, Merz announced the initiative to keep Europe at the table.
Merz's office said he would on Wednesday talk to leaders from 'Finland, France, the UK, Italy, Poland, Ukraine, the heads of the European Commission and Council, the secretary general of NATO, as well as the US president and his deputy'.
According to Germany's Bild daily, a first conference call will include the European leaders, Zelensky, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
This would be followed by a joint call with Trump and Vice President JD Vance, the newspaper said.
The idea of a US-Russia meeting without Zelensky has raised concerns that a deal could require Ukraine to cede swathes of territory, which the EU has rejected.
Over the weekend, several European leaders pushed Trump to exert more pressure on Russia in a joint statement and warned that 'the path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine'.
'Testing Putin'
Ahead of yesterday's EU talks, Zelensky warned against capitulating to Putin's demands.
'Russia refuses to stop the killings, and therefore must not receive any rewards or benefits. And this is not just a moral position -- it is a rational one,' Zelensky wrote in a statement published on social media.
'Concessions do not persuade a killer,' he added.
Asked on CNN on Sunday if Zelensky could be present at the Alaska summit, US ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker responded that 'yes, I certainly think it's possible.'
'Certainly, there can't be a deal that everybody that's involved in it doesn't agree to. And, I mean, obviously, it's a high priority to get this war to end.'
The EU's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, also said any US-Russia deal to end the war had to include Ukraine and the bloc.
'The US has the power to force Russia to negotiate seriously,' she said. '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.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Gulf Insider
24 minutes ago
- Gulf Insider
AfD Tops Poll As Germany's Most Popular Political Party
The poll, conducted by the Forsa Institute for Social Research and Statistical Analysis on behalf of RTL Deutschland, showed that 26 percent of Germans would vote for the AfD. The AfD, an anti-mass immigration party, came second in Germany's national parliamentary elections, earning nearly 21 percent of the vote. The new polling puts the right-wing party ahead of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's mainstream conservative bloc, the Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union (CSU). The CDU/CSU slid to 24 percent, its worst result since the 2021 federal election. Germany's manufacturing sector, the largest in Europe, has had two years of contraction and is expected to broadly stagnate in 2025, according to an EU Commission macroeconomic forecast. Only 14 percent of poll respondents said they expected the economic situation to improve, while 62 percent anticipated a deterioration, which it said was 'the highest pessimism level' of the current year. Germany is also struggling with the loss of affordable Russian gas, historic Volkswagen plant closures, and fierce competition from cheaper Chinese electric vehicles. The country has gone through a major population change, with its net population increasing by more than 3.5 million between 2014 and 2024, driven entirely by migration. During this period, the number of German citizens fell by 2 million to 71.6 million, while the foreign population grew to 13.1 million from around 7.5 million, Statistics Office data showed. In 2015, under Chancellor Angela Merkel, more than 1 million refugees, many of them from Syria, as well as Afghans and Iraqis, arrived in Germany. One hundred days after Merz's election as chancellor, his approval ratings have fallen to a record low, with 67 percent 'dissatisfied' with his work. The poll showed that 'dissatisfaction' is particularly pronounced among supporters of the AfD, at 95 percent. In February's general election, Merz fell short of forming a majority government, as is often the case in German politics, and, after lengthy negotiations, his party formed a coalition with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD). At the time, Merz ruled out the party forming a government with the AfD. Forty-three percent of respondents said they expected the CDU/CSU/SPD coalition to end early. AfD's policies include strong support for traditional marriage between a man and woman, the preservation of national independence in the face of the European Union's increasing power, the preservation of German culture amid 'European integration' and Islamization, and border security, including the expulsion of illegal immigrants. Last year, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk deepened his support for the party, defending it against accusations of extremism and championing its policies as the nation's best path forward during challenging times. Robin Brooks, a senior fellow in the global economy and development program at the Brookings Institution, said in an Aug. 13 X post that 'Germany is in real trouble.' 'Its political center refuses to confront immigration, which is the issue driving relentless AfD growth,' he said. 'Instead, the political center name-calls AfD voters. Dereliction of duty.' Despite gaining considerable proportions of the vote, populist parties such as the AfD have been frozen out of governing coalitions in Europe by political opponents who regard them as extremist. In Austria, conservatives, Social Democrats, and liberals formed a coalition in March to block the anti-immigration and euro-skeptic Freedom Party from taking power, even after it won an electoral victory with 29 percent of the vote in September 2024. French President Emmanuel Macron on June 9, 2024, called a surprise snap parliamentary election following his centrist Renaissance party's poor performance in European Parliament elections, when the populist and nationalist party National Rally (RN) performed very strongly. RN, which recently polled at 35 percent, has increased its voter share ahead of the French presidential elections, which are scheduled to be held in or around April 2027.
Gulf Insider
an hour ago
- Gulf Insider
'Mired In Soviet Decision-Making': Report Pins Immense Losses On Zelensky's Firing Of Gen. Zaluzhny
The Western mainstream media continues the trend of turning on Ukraine, now that it's clear that it cannot win the war against Russia. Recall that during the opening couple years of war, the MSM treated any criticisms of Zelensky or the Ukrainian Army as totally off-limits. But now, a fresh Wall Street Journal report published Tuesday calls out Ukraine's military for having increasingly adopted a rigid, Soviet-style command structure that stifles battlefield initiative. Soldiers interviewed by the outlet described large-scale meatgrinder type tactics of blindly being sent on suicidal frontal assaults while being denied permission to withdraw from dangerous positions. The consistent commentary on the war has long been that while Russia might have the manpower to do these old 'war of attrition' tactics, Ukraine certainly does not. Ukrainian forces in the initial stages of the war were praised for their effective use of maneuver warfare and were more nimble and able to more quickly seize the initiative, or strategically retreat as necessary. 'Ukrainian officers and infantrymen complain of a centralized command culture that often punishes initiative and wastes men's lives. Generals order repetitive frontal assaults that have little hope of success, and deny requests from beleaguered units to carry out tactical retreats and save their men. Casualties accumulate on operations with little strategic value,' the WSJ report says. Front line commanders have increasingly gone public to voice their frustrations after witnessing needless tragic losses: Privately, many Ukrainian soldiers repeat a bitter refrain: 'Big Soviet army beats little Soviet army.' Capt. Oleksandr Shyrshyn, a battalion commander in Ukraine's 47th Mechanized Brigade, took his frustrations public. In May he denounced the army's top brass on Facebook. Railing against 'stupid' orders and losses, he spoke of pervasive fear in the army of generals who are 'only capable of reprimands, investigations, imposing penalties.' Addressing the General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces, he said: 'I hope your children will also be in the infantry and will carry out your tasks.' He told the Journal he was driven to speak out after his battalion was repeatedly ordered by senior commanders to launch assaults that were unrealistic for the unit's limited means. We also should note something the WSJ and other establishment media won't admit: the Western allies' constant arms and monetary support – as well as the naive urging on of Ukraine forces to 'win' – has likely only encouraged such 'repetative' and 'unrealistic' frontal assaults. Click here to read more…
Daily Tribune
4 hours ago
- Daily Tribune
Trump says wants three-way meeting with Putin, Zelensky
US President Donald Trump said Wednesday he was planning a second meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin soon after Friday's Alaska summit -- this time with Ukraine leader Volodymyr Zelensky included. Trump is due to sit down with Putin in Anchorage on Friday, the first meeting between the Russian leader and a sitting US president since 2021. "If the first one goes okay, we'll have a quick second one," he told reporters. "I would like to do it almost immediately, and we'll have a quick second meeting between President Putin and President Zelensky and myself, if they'd like to have me there." The high-stakes talks come with Trump seeking to broker an end to Russia's nearly threeand-a-half year war in Ukraine, and Zelensky and his European allies have urged the Republican to push for a ceasefire. A stepped-up Russian offensive, and the fact Zelensky has not been invited to the Anchorage meeting Friday, have heightened fears that Trump and Putin could strike a deal that forces painful concessions on Ukraine. Trump said Russia would face "very severe consequences" if Putin did not agree to end the war after Friday's meeting, without elaborating. The US leader promised dozens of times during his 2024 election campaign to end the war on his first day in office but has made scant progress towards brokering a peace deal. He threatened "secondary sanctions" on Russia's trading partners over its invasion of Ukraine but his deadline for action came a n d we n t l a s t week with no action announced. Trump told reporters he'd had a "very good call" with European leaders including Zelensky as he took questions from reporters at an arts event at Washington's Kennedy Center. "I would rate it at 10. You know -- very, very friendly," he said.
