Trump, EU leaders to talk ahead of Friday's Putin meeting in Alaska
Aug. 13 (UPI) -- Ahead of President Donald Trump's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, the European Union will have a call with him Wednesday to remind him that he shouldn't negotiate without Ukraine.
The call on Wednesday, organized by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, will include Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and several European leaders who are friendly with Trump, like Italy Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Zelensky will be in Berlin for the meeting, his office said on Wednesday, and is expected to later brief reporters with Merz.
At the Friday meeting in Alaska, Trump will meet with Putin to try to end the war with Ukraine. But Zelensky hasn't been invited.
"We cannot accept that territorial issues between Russia and America are discussed or even decided over the heads of Europeans, over the heads of Ukrainians," Merz said in a TV interview Sunday. "I assume that the American government sees it the same way. That is why there is this close coordination."
Merz, a center-right politician, has heavily courted Trump since taking office in May. He has tried to impress upon Trump that if the United States were to boldly intervene on behalf of Ukraine, it could drive Putin into a cease-fire and peace talks.
Trump's recent frustration with Russia's repeated bombing of Ukraine has made him more receptive to Merz's pleas. But this week, he told reporters he wanted to see what Putin had on his mind, and if he could broker "a deal," which could include swaps of land held by Ukraine and Russia.
But peace on bad terms for Putin might encourage him to send troops to another neighbor and threaten Europe.
"It's really a concern that Putin might feel emboldened," Anna Sauerbrey, foreign editor for Germany's Die Zeit newspaper, told The New York Times. "Not to go for Berlin, of course, but to cause some unrest in other Baltic countries, other European countries."
Europe's leaders seemed optimistic that Trump will hear their pleas and take Europe's needs into consideration.
The EU on Tuesday demanded that the Ukrainian people should determine their own future and that no peace deal with Russia could be decided without Ukraine at the table. Hungary disavowed itself from the calls.
Leaders of 26 of 27 European Union nations said in a statement that viable negotiations must be within the framework of a cease-fire or easing of hostilities and warned of the threat the war posed to European and international security.
There appears to be "more of an understanding from the Americans that you can't just go for land swaps which would somehow give a prize to Russia," said one European Union official, who was granted anonymity by the Washington Post. But, the official said, "it's clear that there are sort of discrepancies, and as we've seen it in the U.S. system by now, you have one man who will decide."
Trump told reporters Monday that "It's not up to me to make a deal," echoing what Europe is saying, that Ukraine must be part of the negotiations.
"I guess everyone's afraid Putin will play Trump's ego again like he has in the past," said a second European official to the Washington Post. "Who knows, maybe he comes there with another noble-sounding offer or maybe they give [Trump] some state award."
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