BRUSSELS\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The European Union is drafting a list of concessions that it believes Russia must make to secure any long-term peace in Ukraine, the bloc\u2019s top diplomat said Tuesday, as U.S.-run talks to end four years of war show little sign of progress.<\/p>\n
Russian forces used cluster munitions in an attack on a market in Ukraine, killing seven, as envoys from Moscow and Kyiv met in Abu Dhabi last week for another round of U.S.-brokered talks. No breakthrough was made, although a new prisoner swap was agreed.<\/p>\n
After saying in 2024 that he could end the war in a day, then 100 days, President Trump has now given Ukraine and Russia until June to come to an agreement.<\/p>\n
The EU is convinced that Russia is not negotiating seriously and it doubts that European and Ukrainian interests are being represented by the Trump administration, so work has begun on \u201ca sustainable peace plan\u201d that might force Moscow\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have just seen increased bombing by Russians during these talks,\u201d EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said, including the targeting of Ukraine\u2019s electricity grid during what has been the coldest winter of the war.<\/p>\n
Kallas said that the 27-nation bloc is \u201cvery grateful\u201d for U.S. diplomatic efforts so far, but \u201cto have sustainable peace also, everybody around the table including the Russians and the Americans need to understand that you need Europeans to agree.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also have conditions,\u201d Kallas told reporters in Brussels. \u201cAnd we should put the conditions not on Ukrainians that have already been pressured a lot, but on the Russians.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kallas said these conditions could include demands that Russia return possibly thousands of children abducted from Ukraine and limits on the size of the Russian armed forces once the war is over. Russia insists on a cap for Ukraine\u2019s forces.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Ukrainian army is not the issue. It\u2019s the Russian army. It\u2019s the Russian military expenditure. If they spend so much on the military they will have to use it again,\u201d Kallas said.<\/p>\n
A draft list of conditions is likely to be shared among EU member countries in coming days for a possible discussion when the bloc\u2019s foreign ministers meet on Feb. 23.<\/p>\n
Kallas said that Ukraine is reliant on the United States for support and that this dependency has seen it forced to make almost all the concessions.<\/p>\n
\u201cPressuring the weaker party is always maybe getting the results faster but it\u2019s only a declaration that we have peace. It\u2019s not sustainable peace. It\u2019s not going to be a guarantee for Ukraine or anybody else that Russia is not going to attack again.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said that the Europeans do not want to start a separate track of peace talks, which Russia in any case would likely dismiss, but she said that it is important \u201cto change the narrative.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody wants this war to stop, except the Russians,\u201d she said. \u201cWe can push them into the place where they actually want to end this war. They\u2019re not there yet. Unfortunately, it\u2019s not an easy solution.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kallas cited recent intelligence estimates that President Vladimir Putin is struggling to find recruits to continue his war effort and insisted that EU sanctions are damaging Russia\u2019s economy as inflation there runs high.<\/p>\n
The EU is also working on a ban to halt repairs and other services to ships carrying Russian oil. Kallas hopes to bring the Group of Seven nations onboard in talks at the Munich Security Conference over the weekend.<\/p>\n
Cook writes for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BRUSSELS\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The European Union is drafting a list of concessions that it believes Russia must make to secure any…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[211,6996,210,6995,6993,140,327,6999,6990,6992,238,6997,6994,6998,6991,241,546],"class_list":{"0":"post-8416","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brussels","8":"tag-belgium","9":"tag-bloc","10":"tag-brussels","11":"tag-concession","12":"tag-condition","13":"tag-day","14":"tag-eu","15":"tag-europeans","16":"tag-kallas","17":"tag-list","18":"tag-russia","19":"tag-russian-force","20":"tag-russians","21":"tag-sustainable-peace-plan","22":"tag-talk","23":"tag-ukraine","24":"tag-war"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}