{"id":128525,"date":"2026-06-25T09:41:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T09:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/128525\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T09:41:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T09:41:13","slug":"eu-leaders-squabble-over-outreach-to-moscow-as-ukraine-war-rages-on-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/128525\/","title":{"rendered":"EU leaders squabble over outreach to Moscow as Ukraine war rages on"},"content":{"rendered":"

BRUSSELS (AP) \u2014 European Union leaders have been unable to agree on setting up a back-channel with Moscow<\/a> to ensure that the bloc\u2019s interests are protected should progress be made in negotiations to end Russia\u2019s war on Ukraine<\/a>, some of them said on Friday.<\/p>\n

European Council President Ant\u00f3nio Costa, who chaired their two-day summit in Brussels this week, had directed his office to reach out to the Kremlin and proposed a senior official to make contact. Costa said his aim was not to mediate or set up a parallel negotiating track to the one led by the United States, which is making little progress<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe needed to immediately establish this direct contact,\u201d Costa said, clarifying that Brussels would not seek to mediate in negotiations but rather open communications.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot depend only on others to interpret Russian messages and we must be able to convey directly to Russia our own messages,” he added.<\/p>\n

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she supported Costa’s approach because \u201cour entire continent is at risk, and this is why Europe must be one of the architects of a just and lasting peace.”<\/p>\n

An unresolved disagreement over diplomacy<\/p>\n

Debate has been swirling around Europe in recent months about whether to appoint a mediator for talks with Russia to help get things moving again, but this has been largely rejected as many believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin would be unlikely to negotiate anyway.<\/p>\n

Instead, the 27 EU countries have focused on concessions<\/a> that Russia should make to secure peace.<\/p>\n

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz stressed that peace negotiations must ultimately be conducted by Ukraine, Russia, Europe and the U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho speaks for the European Union is something we don\u2019t need to decide on today,\u201d he said. \u201cWe will decide on that when talks come about.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that Costa has \u201can important to role to play\u201d as president of the European Council, representing the EU, preparing and organizing summits, and \u201cwe don\u2019t need to make decisions going beyond that at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Merz highlighted efforts to coordinate diplomacy by the so-called E3 group of countries \u2014 Germany, France and Britain \u2014 a format that he said came about \u201cat the explicit wish of Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

French President Emmanuel Macron<\/a> said \u201cEuropeans are not mediators\u201d in the negotiations but that “Costa, when the competencies are defined, will have a place.”<\/p>\n

Margus Tsahkna, foreign minister of Estonia \u2014 a nation on the EU\u2019s eastern flank that has faced drone incursions and was once occupied by the Soviet Union \u2014 said that \u201cEurope must not assume the role of a neutral mediator\u201d but instead buttress Ukraine\u2019s position to \u201cforce the Kremlin into serious negotiations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some nations support Costa’s backchannel proposal<\/p>\n

As European leaders left overnight after the summit wrapped up, Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever joked that Costa would be the envoy to Moscow.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just talking about you, Ant\u00f3nio,\u201d De Wever said while laughing and shaking Costa\u2019s hand. \u201cI was full of praise, saying you are the only one who can represent us and that we will send you to Moscow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Irish Prime Minister Miche\u00e1l Martin said that \u201copening up a channel is not a mistake in our view, and I trust Ant\u00f3nio Costa.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was very clear last evening is that any negotiations would have to be first and foremost between Ukraine and Russia, but there are no indications that Russia is coming to the table at all,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babi\u0161 said the leaders had failed at the summit to resolve their differences over the approach overnight. \u201cEurope is unable to agree even on whether there will be negotiations or who will lead them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Russia responds publicly to the overture<\/p>\n

Putin has tried to cut out Europe and Kyiv from negotiations with the U.S. over Ukraine\u2019s future. But the Kremlin said on Friday it was \u201cready for contact\u201d with Europe, on the condition it abandon its desire to talk to Moscow from the position of force.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov argued that the EU can not be an impartial peace broker. He again rejected Western claims that Moscow was harboring plants to attack Europe as \u201cprovocation\u201d and \u201cnonsense\u201d while warning that Europe\u2019s military buildup poses growing security threats.<\/p>\n

\u201cA direct confrontation between NATO and Russia could rapidly escalate into an exchange of nuclear strikes, with catastrophic consequences,\u201d Lavrov said in an essay released by the Russian Foreign Ministry.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Geir Moulson in Berlin, Angela Charlton in Paris, and Karel Janicek and Stanislav Hodin in Prague, Czech Republic, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BRUSSELS (AP) \u2014 European Union leaders have been unable to agree on setting up a back-channel with Moscow…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[138],"tags":[428,307,1090,939,233,912,329,8122,330],"class_list":["post-128525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-antonio-costa","tag-antonio-costa","tag-europe","tag-european-council","tag-european-union","tag-friedrich-merz","tag-moscow","tag-russia","tag-the-kremlin","tag-ukraine"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116810093859889185","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128525","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=128525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}