{"id":126298,"date":"2026-06-23T20:23:35","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T20:23:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/126298\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T20:23:35","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T20:23:35","slug":"some-eu-leaders-furious-at-costa-officials-calls-with-the-kremlin-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/126298\/","title":{"rendered":"Some EU leaders furious at Costa official\u2019s calls with the Kremlin \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Baltic countries \u2014 Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia \u2014 in particular were \u201cfurious\u201d about the Russia outreach, according to a European diplomat working on the issue. Several leaders learned about the calls only after they appeared in media reports and were angry about it, a further three diplomats said. The all spoke to POLITICO on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.<\/p>\n<p>The Costa team did inform Germany, France and the U.K. \u2014 known as the E3 \u2014 and the European Commission before the calls took place, one of the diplomats said. Two other diplomats, however, said Berlin had not been pre-warned.<\/p>\n<p>Justification<\/p>\n<p>Portuguese Lourtie, who has a reputation in Brussels as something of a dealmaker, addressed ambassadors from the EU\u2019s 27 governments on Wednesday when news of the calls, first reported by Bloomberg, became public. While complaining that they had been leaked to the media, he justified them by saying they followed a direct request by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for Europe to get involved in the peace negotiations, according to another EU diplomat with knowledge of the meeting.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/GettyImages-2205379968-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-8630501\"  \/>Costa is pictured with chief of staff Pedro Lourtie in Brussels before a March 2025 EU summit. | Thierry Monasse\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>Lourtie didn\u2019t confirm whether any further calls will take place but pledged to inform ambassadors if so, the diplomat said.<\/p>\n<p>The calls were with Putin\u2019s national security adviser, Lourtie told the ambassadors, according to three of the diplomats.<\/p>\n<p>Russia doesn\u2019t have a national security adviser, though Sergei Shoigu serves as the secretary of the Security Council, Yuri Ushakov is President Vladimir Putin\u2019s chief foreign-policy aide and Nikolai Patrushev serves as his senior strategic adviser with significant influence over security policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Baltic countries \u2014 Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia \u2014 in particular were \u201cfurious\u201d about the Russia outreach, according&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[138],"tags":[428,2420,947,279,242,6679,245,249,273,952,264,2701,6099,1432,248,329,23104,330,1436,17,328,325,347],"class_list":["post-126298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-antonio-costa","tag-antonio-costa","tag-communications","tag-diplomacy","tag-donald-tusk","tag-emmanuel-macron","tag-estonia","tag-france","tag-germany","tag-giorgia-meloni","tag-italy","tag-keir-starmer","tag-latvia","tag-lithuania","tag-negotiations","tag-poland","tag-russia","tag-sergei-shoigu","tag-ukraine","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","tag-war-in-ukraine"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116801293768145233","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}