Top European Union diplomat Kaja Kallas said Tuesday that she is drafting a list of concessions that she believes Russia must make to secure any long-term peace in Ukraine as U.S.-run talks to end four years of war show little sign of progress.
Russian forces used cluster munitions in an attack on a market in Ukraine killing seven as envoys from Moscow and Kyiv met in Abu Dhabi last week for another round of U.S.-brokered talks. No breakthrough was made, although a new prisoner swap was agreed.
After saying in 2024 that he could end the war in a day, then 100 days, U.S. President Donald Trump has now given Ukraine and Russia until June to come to an agreement.
The EU is convinced that Russia is not negotiating seriously and it doubts that European and Ukrainian interests are being represented by the Trump administration, so work has begun on “a sustainable peace plan” that might force Moscow’s hand.
“We have just seen increased bombing by Russians during these talks,” EU foreign policy chief Kallas said, including the targeting of Ukraine’s electricity grid during what has been the coldest winter of the war.
Kallas said that the 27-nation bloc is “very grateful” for U.S. diplomatic efforts so far, but “to have sustainable peace also, everybody around the table including the Russians and the Americans need to understand that you need Europeans to agree.”
European conditions
“We also have conditions,” Kallas told reporters in Brussels. “And we should put the conditions not on Ukrainians that have already been pressured a lot, but on the Russians.”
Kallas said these conditions could include demands that Russia return possibly thousands of children abducted from Ukraine and limits on the size of the Russian armed forces once the war is over. Russia insists on a cap for Ukraine’s forces.
“The Ukrainian army is not the issue. It’s the Russian army. It’s the Russian military expenditure. If they spend so much on the military they will have to use it again,” Kallas said.
A draft list of conditions is likely to be shared among EU member countries in coming days for a possible discussion when the bloc’s foreign ministers meet on Feb. 23.
Kallas said that Ukraine is reliant on the United States for support and that this dependency has seen it forced to make almost all the concessions.
“Pressuring the weaker party is always maybe getting the results faster but it’s only a declaration that we have peace. It’s not sustainable peace. It’s not going to be a guarantee for Ukraine or anybody else that Russia is not going to attack again.”
She said that the Europeans do not want to start a separate track of peace talks, which Russia in any case would likely dismiss. Russian officials have said they are waiting for the Trump administration to deliver on commitments they say he made to Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit last year.
Kallas described them as “absolute maximalist demands” that are not acceptable to the Europeans. Instead, she said, Europe must “change the narrative” and ratchet up pressure on Putin.
“Everybody wants this war to stop, except the Russians,” she said. “We can push them into the place where they actually want to end this war. They’re not there yet. Unfortunately, it’s not an easy solution.”
Kallas cited recent intelligence estimates that Putin is struggling to find recruits to continue his war effort and insisted that EU sanctions are damaging Russia’s economy as inflation there runs high.
“We need to go from the place where they pretend to negotiate, to where they actually negotiate, and we are not there,” she said.
