The United States and Ukraine want Europe to be represented in the next round of peace negotiations with Russia. And, in fact, Washington claims that it has already convinced Moscow of that: “Both parties [in reference to the two countries at war] have agreed to include our European partners in the next round of negotiations,” said one of the United States special envoys, Jared Kushner, on the social network
“Next time Europe will be there,” Zelensky stressed after meeting Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law, and the other US envoy, Steve Witkoff, in the Irish capital, where the Ukrainian president was attending the summit of the European Political Community. That meeting is followed this Friday also in Dublin by an informal European Council in which EU leaders plan to address, precisely, the issue of how to be represented in these peace talks if it is finally confirmed that Moscow accepts their presence.
Because the Kremlin, for now, has made it clear that its position at the negotiating tables does not change. “Talks with the Europeans will be possible when they contribute to the peace process,” Russian representatives settled on Thursday in Moscow. A euphemism with which Russia comes to demand that Europe (the EU, the United Kingdom, Norway and other countries) stop providing aid to Ukraine in the war if it aspires to sit at the negotiating table, as it has been demanding for some time. In fact, this week a round of talks was held in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) in which Ukraine, Russia and the United States participated but the EU was, once again, excluded.
Despite this, the EU has already engaged in the debate on how to be represented at that negotiating table if, indeed, it is organized at some point. This is one of the points being addressed by European leaders at their informal meeting in Dublin this Friday, where a larger conversation about the continent's security is on the table. A couple of weeks ago, the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, demanded in a letter to the President of the European Council, António Costa, that the debate be opened, and the Portuguese replied that he would take it to this meeting.
In this discussion several positions intersect. On the one hand there is that of the high representative for Foreign Policy of the EU, Kaja Kallas, who claims to have a leading role in a hypothetical negotiation with Russia and Ukraine with the argument that the EU treaties reserve for her position and for the president of the Council the representativeness of the Union in international relations. But there are other voices that remind that countries like the United Kingdom and Norway, which are not part of the EU, are playing a leading role in helping Ukraine during the war. And, in fact, there are formats in which this is addressed, such as the group of the big three (Germany, France and the United Kingdom), called E3, or the expanded E5, in which Italy and Poland are added.
The Prime Minister of Estonia, Kristen Michal, proposed this Friday Kallas herself and the president of the European Council, António Costa, as possible representatives in that negotiation. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, instead defend the E3 format (France, Germany and the United Kingdom), although open to representatives of the EU and NATO.
Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin believes the delegation will likely have “an E3 dimension”. He has also defended that it includes countries that do not belong to the EU but support kyiv, such as the United Kingdom or Norway. The acting Swedish Prime Minister, Ulf Kristersson, has insisted on that idea: "Europe is bigger than the EU; at least the United Kingdom has to be included too."
In any case, whether the representative in these peace talks were an EU official or not, Europe would continue to encounter Putin's warning, reiterated on Thursday, that, if after a hypothetical peace agreement, the proposal to send Western troops to Ukraine were made, that would automatically reignite the war.
The Russian president asserted that Moscow has never refused to dialogue with Europe, and asked Washington to work with its European allies so that they decide "what they want: peace or war in Ukraine." Putin also reiterated that he does not want to freeze the conflict and that the border that Russia considers its own should be the only line of separation with Ukraine.
That border includes the four Ukrainian regions that Moscow says it will annex in 2022: Donetsk and Luhansk, which form Donbas, and Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, in the south. Russia does not control any of the four completely. In Donetsk, Ukraine maintains Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the main cities of the so-called Donbas fortress belt.
From Moscow, Witkoff and Kushner traveled to Dublin, where they met with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky has been demanding that Europe have a place in the negotiations for years and has welcomed the announcement. He has also expressed his hope that the next round will address concrete steps toward a ceasefire. The Ukrainian leader has again denounced “systematic” restrictions on Starshield, SpaceX's military satellite service used by his troops on the front.
