\u201cWe are Russia\u2019s next target, and we are already in harm\u2019s way,\u201d\u00a0Rutte\u00a0said last week. \u201cRussia has brought war back to Europe and we must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents and great grandparents endured.\u201d<\/p>\n
Little wonder then that European officials are casting the next few days as existential. The latest shot of 11th-hour diplomacy will see the leaders of the U.K., Germany and possibly France, potentially with Trump\u2019s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his special envoy Steve Witkoff, meeting with Zelenskyy in Berlin.<\/p>\n
As if to underscore the significance of the meeting, \u201cnumerous European heads of state and government, as well as the leaders of the EU and NATO, will join the talks\u201d after the initial discussion, said Stefan Kornelius, spokesperson for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. French President Emmanuel Macron hasn\u2019t confirmed his attendance but spoke to Zelenskyy by telephone on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The discussion will represent Europe\u2019s attempt to influence the final settlement, weeks after a 28-point peace plan drafted by Witkoff\u00a0 \u2014 reportedly with the aid of several Kremlin officials \u2014 provoked a furious backlash in both Kyiv and European capitals. They\u2019ve since scrambled to put together an alternative.<\/p>\n
Further European disunity this week would send a \u201cdisastrous signal to Ukraine,\u201d said one EU official. That outcome wouldn\u2019t just be a hammer blow to the war-struck nation, the official added: \u201cIt\u2019s also fair to say that Europe will then fail as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Emptying territories<\/p>\n
This time the focus will be on a 20-point amendment to the plan drafted by Kyiv and its European allies and submitted to Washington for review last week. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe are Russia\u2019s next target, and we are already in harm\u2019s way,\u201d\u00a0Rutte\u00a0said last week. \u201cRussia has brought war…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[71115,767,15856,1789,17777,13489,943,473,5293,32,2000,804,299,474,36,1945,1824,2190,2199,2122,129858,660,24479,2992,809,770,11666,332,811,2558,7070,657,15,49,771,335],"class_list":{"0":"post-633130","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-andrej-babis","9":"tag-baltics","10":"tag-bart-de-wever","11":"tag-belgium","12":"tag-bridges","13":"tag-bulgaria","14":"tag-canada","15":"tag-defense","16":"tag-diplomacy","17":"tag-donald-trump","18":"tag-eu","19":"tag-eu-affairs","20":"tag-europe","21":"tag-finance","22":"tag-france","23":"tag-friedrich-merz","24":"tag-germany","25":"tag-hungary","26":"tag-italy","27":"tag-japan","28":"tag-jared-kushner","29":"tag-kremlin","30":"tag-malta","31":"tag-mark-rutte","32":"tag-negotiations","33":"tag-poland","34":"tag-produce","35":"tag-russia","36":"tag-security","37":"tag-slovakia","38":"tag-steve-witkoff","39":"tag-ukraine","40":"tag-united-kingdom","41":"tag-united-states","42":"tag-war","43":"tag-war-in-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115721400769252316","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633130","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=633130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}