talks in Istanbul<\/a> were the first direct talks between officials from the rwo sides for more than three years. They lasted less than two hours, and the sides agreed to the biggest prisoner exchange since the start of the war in 2022, but failed to make a major breakthrough on a ceasefire.<\/p>\n\u201cWe just had a meeting with President Zelenskyy and then a phone call with President Trump to discuss the developments in the negotiations today,\u201d Starmer said from Albania\u2019s capital, Tirana, where leaders of dozens of European countries were gathered for the European Political Community summit.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the Russian position is clearly unacceptable, and not for the first time.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo as a result of that meeting with President Zelenskyy and that call with President Trump, we are now closely aligning our responses and will continue to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n
French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters that if Putin continued to reject a ceasefire, \u201cwe will need to have a response and therefore escalate sanctions\u201d, which, he said, were being \u201creworked\u201d by European nations and the US.<\/p>\n
EU eyes Russia\u2019s shadow fleet<\/p>\n
Macron said it was too early to provide details on the \u201creworked\u201d sanctions, but European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has pledged to \u201cincrease the pressure\u201d.<\/p>\n
She said on Friday that the measures would target the shadow fleet of ageing cargo vessels that Russia is using to bypass international sanctions and the Nord Stream pipeline consortium. Russia\u2019s financial sector would also be targeted.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Zelenskyy had said that Ukraine was committed to ending the war, but urged the European leaders to ramp up sanctions \u201cagainst Russia\u2019s energy sector and banks\u201d if Putin continued to drag his feet in talks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Putin made a mistake by sending a low-level delegation,\u201d NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said as he arrived at the Tirana summit. \u201cThe ball is clearly in his part of the field now, in his court. He has to play ball. He has to be serious about wanting peace.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"European leaders speak to US president after Russia-Ukraine talks fail to achieve major breakthrough. European leaders have agreed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[10541,2000,299,12,7661,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-107715","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-albania","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","13":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}