European foreign ministers and officials warned late on Wednesday that the future of Ukraine could not be decided without Europe or Kyiv after Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin agreed to “immediately” hold peace talks.
“Any agreement that excludes Europe won’t work. Europe will not be sidelined,” an EU official told Euractiv.
US President Trump and Russia’s leader Putin agreed in a phone call on Wednesday evening to “immediately” open talks to end the war in Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy then spoke with Trump shortly after.
In the weeks prior, European diplomats had voiced concern about a scenario where Trump would be inclined to hold bilateral talks with Putin over Ukraine’s and the Europeans’ heads.On Wednesday, they appeared to be taken by surprise by the move and comments from US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
The US top diplomat on Wednesday said that a return of Ukraine to its pre-2014 borders was “an unrealistic objective” while taking NATO’s open door policy towards Ukraine off the table.
“The positions expressed by the US Secretary of Defense were well expected, but in negotiations with Russia, it’s unwise to play your cards too soon,“ the EU official added.
A group of European foreign ministers from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, the EU, Britain and Ukraine, attending a Weimar+ ministerial meeting in Paris on Wednesday evening, said any future peace deal could not be achieved without the involvement of Ukraine and its European partners.
“We share the goal to keep supporting Ukraine until a just, comprehensive and lasting peace is reached – a peace that guarantees the interest of Ukraine and our own,” the Weimar+ foreign ministers said later in a joint statement.
They emphasised that they were “looking forward to discussing the way ahead together with our American allies.”
“Ukraine and Europe must be part of any negotiations. Ukraine should be provided with strong security guarantees. A just and lasting peace in Ukraine is a necessary condition for a strong transatlantic security,” they added.”There will be no just and lasting peace in Ukraine without the participation of Europeans,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot told ministers.
Germany’s Annalena Baerbock and Spain’s José Manuel Albares both said that “no decision on Ukraine can be made without Ukraine” and called for EU unity.
“We want peace for Ukraine, but we want an unjust war to end with a just peace,” Baerbock said.
“There is no better guarantee for the security of our continent than close transatlantic cooperation,” Poland’s Radosław Sikorski said.
Trump’s latest move is expected to be the centre of a flurry of meetings in the next few days, with NATO defense ministers meeting for a second day in Brussels on Thursday and the Munich Security Conference starting on Friday.
The president implied that Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio would meet Zelenskyy in Munich on Friday.
European diplomats told Euractiv they would use the Munich talks to seek out American counterparts in various constellations and try to hammer in their points when it comes to Ukraine.
