Europe on edge after Trump envoy's ‘translation blunder' amid high-stakes peace talks

Sydney Morning Herald

5 hours ago

Bild reported that Witkoff thought Russia was proposing its 'peaceful withdrawal' from Kherson and Zaporizhzhia when he was instead demanding the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from those regions.
'Witkoff doesn't know what he's talking about,' a Ukrainian government official told Bild, adding that the German government shared this view.
'It's not going to make anybody super happy'
A White House official told the Associated Press that Trump was open to a trilateral summit with both the Russian and Ukrainian leaders, but was planning the bilateral meeting requested by Putin.
The statement from the Nordic-Baltic Eight represented the views of the leaders of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden.
US Vice President JD Vance said a negotiated settlement between Russia and Ukraine was unlikely to satisfy either side, saying the US was seeking a settlement both countries could accept.
'It's not going to make anybody super happy. Both the Russians and the Ukrainians, probably, at the end of the day, are going to be unhappy with it,' he said on Fox News on Sunday, Washington time.
Vance's comments appeared to acknowledge that Zelensky would be part of the discussions in some way, if not directly with Putin in Alaska.
'We're at a point now where we're trying to figure out, frankly, scheduling and things like that, around when these three leaders could sit down and discuss an end to this conflict,' he said.
Russian strikes injured at least 12 people in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region, the country's Foreign Ministry said on Sunday.
Trump has said a potential deal would involve 'some swapping of territories to the betterment of both' countries – signalling an outcome fiercely opposed by Ukraine.
EU foreign ministers will meet on Monday to discuss next steps.
'The US has the power to force Russia to negotiate seriously,' EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Sunday.
'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.'
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told the ABC network in the US that Friday's summit 'will be about testing Putin' on how serious he was about ending the war.
Rutte said a deal could not include legal recognition of Russian control over Ukrainian land, although it might include de facto recognition.
He compared it to the situation after World War II when Washington accepted that the Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were de facto controlled by the Soviet Union but did not legally recognise their annexation.