‘We, as an independent country, simply will not be able to accept any agreements without us’, says president. Copy link. twitter. facebook. whatsapp. Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Thursday that he would reject any peace negotiated between the United States and Russia as European leaders rounded on Donald Trump. The Ukrainian president insisted European Union leaders must be given a seat in any negotiations to end the war.
“It’s important that everything does not go according to Putin’s plans, in which he wants to do everything to make his negotiations bilateral [with the US],” Mr Zelensky told reporters before travelling to the Munich Security Conference in Germany. “We, as an independent country, simply will not be able to accept any agreements without us,” he added. The Kremlin said it believed its main interlocutor in the talks would be Washington, even after Ukraine had joined the talks “one way or another”.
On Wednesday, Mr Trump continued Washington’s easing of tensions with Moscow, with the US president saying he would “love” to see Russia back in the G7 group of nations. Russia was suspended from the forum – then called the G8 – in 2014 over its annexation of Crimea. Moscow announced its permanent withdrawal in 2017. Dmitry Peskov, its spokesman, told state television that Moscow would “expand working contacts in the coming days and weeks” with the US.
Mr Zelensky described Mr Trump’s decision to speak to Putin first about the talks as “unpleasant”. The Ukrainian leader’s remarks were echoed by European leaders fearful over the prospect of any peace settlement being negotiated by Mr Trump over their heads. The concerns were sparked on Tuesday when Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, told Nato allies that Ukraine could forget about reclaiming territory lost to Russia since 2014 and that Nato membership was off the table in the talks.
However, he appeared to partially walk back the Nato position on Thursday, saying the details would be down to the “leader of the free world” to negotiate. Kaja Kallas, the EU’s top diplomat, accused Mr Trump of appeasement and warned his approach would fail. She said: “Any deal behind our backs will not work, any agreement will need also Ukraine and Europe being part of it – and this is clear that appeasement also always fails,” Ms Kallas said.
“Any quick fix is a dirty deal we have seen before, it won’t stop the killing.”. Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defence minister, said the US should have not made public concessions in advance of the talks with Putin. “In my view, it would have been better to speak about a possible Nato membership for Ukraine or possible losses of territory at the negotiating table,” he told reporters at Nato’s headquarters in Brussels.
His comments were echoed by Sebastian Lecornu, who mocked Mr Trump’s “peace through strength” motto by suggesting the US president was instead pursuing “peace through weakness”. “And peace through weakness, unfortunately, could lead us to dramatic security situations, or even to the long-term widening of the conflict,” he added. Antonio Costa, the European Council’s president, wrote: “There will be no credible and successful negotiations, no lasting peace, without Ukraine and without the EU.”.
Responding to the criticism, Mr Hegseth accused critics of Mr Trump’s opening gambit of trying to score a “cheap political point”. “But I challenge anyone else to think of a world leader at this moment who, with credibility and strength, could bring those two leaders to the table and forge a durable peace that ultimately serves the interests of Ukraine, stops the killing and the death,” he told a news conference after a meeting of Nato defence ministers on Thursday.
He added: “All of that said these negotiations are led by President Trump. Everything is on the table in his conversations with Vladimir Putin and Zelensky, what he decides to allow or not allow is at the purview of the leader of the free world: President Trump.”. Commentators inside Russia celebrated openly on state television over Mr Trump’s overtures to Putin. Outside Russia, Boris Bondarev, a former senior political officer of the Russian mission with the United Nations in Geneva, told The Telegraph: “It turns out Putin knows how to conduct diplomacy, whereas neither Americans nor Europeans know how to do it.”.
Mr Bondarev said that if Mr Trump made concessions to Putin, the US president would admit that Americans had lost and were always wrong. He added: “I don’t think that Trump even remotely understands that”. Tatiana Stanovya, a political analyst, said that Putin aimed to take Ukraine under control, and he was not planning to “scale back his demands”. “This will be a long bargaining, where Moscow is ready for any outcome, from limited agreements to a complete breakdown of dialogue or even escalation,” wrote Tatiana Stanovya, of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre in Berlin.
