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Ukraine\u2019s Foreign Affairs Minister Andrii Sybiha is pictured in Cernay-la-Ville, France on March 26, 2026. | Pool photo by Michel Euler via AFP\/Getty Images <\/p>\nToo soon?<\/p>\n
Talks about a potential EU special envoy to represent the bloc in talks with Russia are heating up as the U.S. has stepped back from its peace efforts, with Donald Trump\u2019s mediators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, busy trying to broker a ceasefire with Iran.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have endorsed the idea of having a European at the table \u2014 though both have very different ideas as to who should do the job.<\/p>\n
After Putin floated Schr\u00f6der\u2019s name, Zelenskyy\u2019s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, mocked that idea, telling POLITICO that Kremlin-friendly French actor G\u00e9rard Depardieu or former U.S. action star Steven Seagal would equally qualified for the job.<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s Foreign Affairs Minister Andrii Sybiha is pictured in Cernay-la-Ville, France on March 26, 2026. | Pool photo by Michel Euler via AFP\/Getty Images <\/p>\n
On their way into the Cyprus gathering, European foreign ministers put forward sharply contrasting takes on whether the EU should start negotiating directly with Russia. <\/p>\n
While top diplomats from the Baltic countries were skeptical, Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Pr\u00e9vot embraced the idea. \u201cWe need to seize the opportunity of the U.S. decision to pause their involvement in the negotiation process between Ukraine and Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that we need to take a common decision, not only identifying one person, but also what kind of content we would like to put on the negotiation table,\u201d he said, adding it was important to have an \u201copen discussion on the issue.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Too soon? Talks about a potential EU special envoy to represent the bloc in talks with Russia are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":990198,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[5293,6561,2000,299,5187,32345,2596,6564,1115,332,7339,657,49,333,2601,335],"class_list":["post-990197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-diplomacy","tag-enlargement","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-gerhard-schroder","tag-kaja-kallas","tag-neighborhood","tag-norway","tag-russia","tag-russia-sanctions","tag-ukraine","tag-united-states","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","tag-war-in-ukraine"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116652328216348367","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990197","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=990197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990197\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/990198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=990197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=990197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=990197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}