European governments have rejected a suggestion by Russian President Vladimir Putin that former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder could represent them in possible future talks with Moscow on the continent\u2019s security.<\/p>\n
Putin said on Saturday he believed the war in Ukraine was coming to an end and that he would be willing to negotiate new security arrangements for Europe, with Schroeder as his \u200cpreferred partner.<\/p>\n
But European Union foreign ministers, attending a meeting in Brussels on Monday, were sceptical that Russia was ready to end the war and negotiate sincerely on peace and security for Europe.<\/p>\n
They dismissed any role for Schroeder, who has worked for Russian state companies and cultivated a close relationship with Putin. \u201cIt\u2019s clear why Putin wants him to be the person – so that actually … he would be sitting on both sides of the table,\u201d EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told reporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we give the right to Russia to appoint a negotiator on our behalf … that would not be very wise,\u201d said Kallas, a former prime minister of Estonia, \u2060a Baltic state that was ruled by Moscow as part of the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n
Asked later if she could personally take part in such talks, Kallas said: \u201cWhen a politician \u200cdoesn\u2019t toot his own horn, the horn usually remains untooted. So I have to say I think I could see through the traps that Russia is presenting\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"European governments have rejected a suggestion by Russian President Vladimir Putin that former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder could…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[1854,428,404,39347,415,307,1090,939,37896,249,39346,34,442,39345,6099,912,329,330,328,739],"class_list":{"0":"post-67256","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-kaja-kallas","8":"tag-andrii-sybiha","9":"tag-antonio-costa","10":"tag-austria","11":"tag-beate-meinl-reisinger","12":"tag-brussels","13":"tag-europe","14":"tag-european-council","15":"tag-european-union","16":"tag-gerhard-schroeder","17":"tag-germany","18":"tag-gunther-krichbaum","19":"tag-iran","20":"tag-kaja-kallas","21":"tag-kestutis-budrys","22":"tag-lithuania","23":"tag-moscow","24":"tag-russia","25":"tag-ukraine","26":"tag-vladimir-putin","27":"tag-washington"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116559910149652273","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67256","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=67256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}