Kaja Kallas, the European Union's top diplomat, denounced U.S. President Donald Trump’s call with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Thursday, saying any deal on Ukraine's future that is arranged without European involvement will be a non-starter.
“It is clear that any deal behind our backs will not work. You need the Europeans, you need the Ukrainians,” Kallas told journalists on the sidelines of the NATO defense ministers’ meeting on Thursday.
“Why are we giving them [Russia] everything they want even before the negotiations have started? It's appeasement. It has never worked,” she added.
Trump said Wednesday he'd had a “lengthy and highly productive phone call” with Putin that morning, confirming the two leaders had agreed to work together on a diplomatic resolution to the war in Ukraine.
Following Trump’s call with Putin, the so-called Weimar+ grouping — the EU, France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain and the U.K. — published a joint statement in support of Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity. “In any negotiation, Europe must have a central role,” Kallas wrote in a post regarding the statement.
But Hungary's illiberal Prime Minister Viktor Orbán mocked the statement on Thursday, describing it as “sad” and “worthless," and arguing that seats at the negotiating table must be earned “through strength, good leadership and smart diplomacy.”
Politico
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