The European Union will never be able to play a classic mediator role in efforts to end Russia’s war on Ukraine, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The EU clearly wanted to help Ukraine in the negotiations, Kallas told journalists after a meeting of EU foreign ministers in the Cypriot port city of Limassol.<\/p>\n
But Europe could never be a neutral mediator between Russia and Ukraine, she added, since the bloc stood by Ukraine’s side and was also defending its own security interests.<\/p>\n
Kallas’s comments come against the backdrop of a debate over whether the EU should play a greater role in diplomatic efforts to end the Ukraine war, given the lack of progress so far in US President Donald Trump’s peace initiative.<\/p>\n
Some EU member states, including Austria, have called for the appointment of an EU chief negotiator.<\/p>\n
Others, such as Germany – and Kallas herself – are opposed to the idea and first want to clarify strategy issues. The former Estonian prime minister also stressed that all EU efforts must complement those of Washington.<\/p>\n
“We are not coming in instead of the United States,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The European Union will never be able to play a classic mediator role in efforts to end Russia’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[18,1941,125,2788,11759,349,11758,11760,88,1828],"class_list":["post-18007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brussels","tag-brussels","tag-eu-member-states","tag-european-union","tag-foreign-ministers","tag-foreign-policy-chief","tag-kaja-kallas","tag-neutral-mediator","tag-russia-and-ukraine","tag-ukraine","tag-ukraine-war"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116653149740387085","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}