{"id":370320,"date":"2025-08-24T18:05:23","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T18:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/370320\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T18:05:23","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T18:05:23","slug":"top-european-diplomat-says-putin-is-setting-a-trap-by-demanding-ukraine-concessions-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/370320\/","title":{"rendered":"Top European diplomat says Putin is setting ‘a trap’ by demanding Ukraine concessions"},"content":{"rendered":"

The European Union\u2019s foreign policy chief said Friday that the possibility of Ukraine ceding land to Russia as part of a peace deal to end their three-year war<\/a> is \u201ca trap\u201d set by Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n

The Russian leader is demanding Ukrainian concessions<\/a> in return for halting his army\u2019s invasion but granting him those demands would amount to rewarding the country that started the fighting, Kaja Kallas said.<\/p>\n

The recent talk about handing Putin concessions is \u201cexactly the trap that Russia wants us to walk into,\u201d Kallas said in an interview with the BBC.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, the discussion all about what Ukraine should give up, what the concessions that Ukraine is willing to (make), whereas we are forgetting that Russia has not made one single concession and they are the ones who are the aggressor here, they are the ones who are brutally attacking another country and killing people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

U.S.-led peace efforts have struggled to get traction, despite U.S. President Donald Trump discussing the war with Putin in Alaska<\/a> last week before hosting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders at the White House<\/a> on Monday.<\/p>\n

Numerous details<\/a> for a formal peace proposal need to be hammered out. Meanwhile, Russia has continued to attack Ukraine<\/a> and has raised objections to some key Ukrainian demands.<\/p>\n

Establishing postwar Western security guarantees for Ukraine, which Kyiv insists are needed to deter another Russian attack, is under discussion by a variety of countries, Kallas said, noting that \u201cit does sound like we are some way off in terms of pinning that down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRussia is just dragging feet. It\u2019s clear that Russia does not want peace,\u201d Kallas said. \u201cPresident Trump has been repeatedly saying that the killing has to stop and Putin is just laughing, not stopping the killing, but increasing the killing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ukraine, meanwhile, has hit back at Russia with long-range weapons<\/a> that are targeting infrastructure supporting Moscow\u2019s war effort. It has hit oil refineries, among other targets, and Russian wholesale gasoline prices have reached record highs in recent days.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian forces on Friday targeted the Druzhba oil pipeline in Russia, hitting the Unecha oil pumping station in the Bryansk region, according to the commander of Ukraine\u2019s Unmanned Systems Forces, Robert Brovdy, also known as Magyar.<\/p>\n

The Druzhba pipeline starts in Russia and takes oil through Belarus and Ukraine to Slovakia and Hungary. In Russia, a section of it goes through the Bryansk region and the Unecha district.<\/p>\n

Ukraine fired HIMARS rockets and drones at the region in a combined attack, Bryansk regional Gov. Alexander Bogomaz said in a Telegram post.<\/p>\n

The pipeline supplies Hungary with more than half of its crude oil. Hungarian Foreign Minister P\u00e9ter Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 wrote on Facebook on Friday that the Druzhba pipeline had been attacked \u201cfor the third time in a short time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is another attack on the energy security of our country. Another attempt to drag us into war,\u201d the minister wrote.<\/p>\n

Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n has taken a combative stance toward both Kyiv and its EU backers while most EU countries have offered political, financial, and military support to Kyiv.<\/p>\n

Orb\u00e1n visited Moscow to meet with Putin last month in a rare trip to Russia by a European leader.<\/p>\n

Slovakia and Hungary are the only remaining EU member states still receiving oil from Russia. The other 25 stopped buying it as part of EU sanctions following Moscow\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Follow AP\u2019s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/russia-ukraine<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The European Union\u2019s foreign policy chief said Friday that the possibility of Ukraine ceding land to Russia as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[129628,3907,2000,299,5187,4179,5212,8614,285,7661,7660,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-370320","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-129628","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-general-news","14":"tag-government-policy","15":"tag-international-agreements","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","18":"tag-war-and-unrest","19":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115085071043571367","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370320","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=370320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}