EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas says allowing Russia to keep occupied Ukrainian land would strengthen Moscow and undermine peace efforts.
Zelensky urges Western allies to finalize security guarantees within ten days, while dismissing Russia’s willingness to negotiate.
European leaders, including Macron and Stubb, echo doubts about Putin’s trustworthiness as Russian strikes hit multiple Ukrainian cities.
EU’s Top Diplomat Warns Ukraine Land Concessions Would Be “Putin’s Trap”
Top EU diplomat warns against territorial compromises in peace talks as Zelensky doubts Russia’s intentions and Western leaders voice skepticism.
Summary
The European Union’s top diplomat has cautioned against pressuring Ukraine into ceding territories to Russia as part of any future peace deal, warning that such concessions would play directly into Moscow’s hands.
According to BBC, in her first UK interview since EU leaders joined Donald Trump’s White House-led peace talks with Ukraine, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told the BBC that territorial concessions would amount to “a trap that Putin wants us to walk into.”
The Donbas region in eastern Ukraine has been at the heart of the conflict for over a decade, forcing around 1.5 million Ukrainians to flee. Ukraine has consistently rejected the idea of trading land for peace, despite Trump’s suggestion of potential “swapping of territories.”
Kallas, who is on the Kremlin’s “wanted list,” emphasized that Ukraine’s strongest security guarantee lay in its military strength rather than paper assurances. “The strongest security guarantee is a strong Ukraine army,” she said, while calling for “credible and robust” commitments from Western allies.
White House Talks Amid Alaska Summit
According to Al Jazeera, leaders from France, Germany, Italy and Finland joined Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for talks at the White House last week. The meeting came just days after Trump hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin at a US military base in Alaska.
Kallas criticized the Alaska summit, claiming Putin left with “everything he wanted” — including the absence of new sanctions. “Putin is just laughing, not stopping the killing but increasing the killing,” she said, adding that the EU was now preparing its 19th package of sanctions to increase pressure on Moscow.
Trump, meanwhile, told US media that he expected clarity on peace talks within two weeks. “After that, we’ll have to maybe take a different tack,” he said in an interview with Newsmax.
Ukrainian President Zelensky expressed doubts about Russia’s willingness to negotiate, accusing Moscow of avoiding the “necessity” of direct talks. “They don’t want to end this war,” he said, while urging Western allies to finalize a framework of security guarantees within ten days.
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On Thursday, as cited in Reuters, Russia launched a significant air attack on eleven locations across Ukraine, including the western city of Lviv near the Polish border, killing at least one and injuring more than a dozen.
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