After meeting European Union defense and foreign affairs ministers in Copenhagen, top EU diplomat Kaja Kallas described “broad support” for a military training mission inside Ukraine.
White House: Trump still working on Ukraine-Russia peace summit
The White House on Friday said President Donald Trump has not given up hope of getting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin to sit down for ceasefire and peace negotiations.
The statement comes as a two-week deadline that Trump gave Putin to do so is set to expire on Monday.
It also comes just hours after French President Emmanuel Macron said Trump ran the risk of getting “played” by Putin “again” in the matter.
“President Trump and his national security team continue to engage with Russian and Ukrainian officials towards a bilateral meeting to stop the killing and end the war,” the AFP news agency quoted an anonymous White House official as saying Friday.
AFP said Trump Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller was indignant when asked about Macron’s comments, snapping, “No president in history has done more to advance the cause of peace.”
“He’s working steadfastly to end the killing, and that’s something that everybody in the world should celebrate,” Miller added.
Trump had said he would end the war in Ukraine on his first day in office in January and has since said that reaching a peace deal is proving harder than he anticipated.
Macron says “coalition of willing’ will hold Ukraine military talks next week
French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday said Ukraine’s backers, the leaders of the so-called “coalition of the willing,” will convene in person and via video link next week to discuss how to provide credible security guarantees to Kyiv in the event that a ceasefire can be negotiated with Russia.
“Our Chiefs of Staff have done very important work since the [August 18] meeting in Washington … and in the last few hours have again allowed us to finalize the contributions of each of the countries,” Macron told reporters in Toulon, France, alongside German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
Macron said the coalition meeting would allow leaders to “take stock next week after the end of the deadline which had been set for Monday.” Trump announced that Russia’s Putin had “two weeks” to move toward negotiations or face serious “consequences.”
The roughly 30-member coalition is made up largely of EU countries, but also includes Turkey, Canada and Australia.
Macron did not say when and where the meeting would take place, only that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — who has been clamoring for more high-level meetings — will attend.
Germany’s Merz seconded the proposed meeting, saying, “I am very much in favor of all of us — that is the Europeans and the Americans — carefully planning the next steps together.”
Lithuanian Defense Minister Dovile Sakaliene, speaking to DW on the sidelines of a meeting of EU defense and foreign ministers on Friday, said of the situation in Ukraine: “It’s crucial that the Ukrainian army is kept strong, because that is the first security guarantee. That is the first line of defense.”
“Secondly, of course,” said Sakaliene, “financial pain to Russia. So that means that the next sanctions package has to be more ambitious.”
“Lithuania has always been pressuring for more secondary sanctions by the United States. That would be a nuclear option that would actually hurt the Russian war machine, that would hurt cash flow to the Russian war machine significantly,” she said.
“And of course, finding a way to make use of those over €200 billion ($234 billion) that are on the table of Russian assets, which still are not used for the benefit of Ukraine,” she added.
Talking about Europe’s strategic dependence on the US, Sakaliene said the US had been metaphorically “carrying” EU and NATO partners “for quite some time,” adding that now “we need to walk next to them” and carry more of the load when it comes to defending Ukraine and Europe.
Sakaliene voiced uneasiness over the idea of Donald Trump negotiating with Russian President Vladimir Putin while also acknowledging that every avenue potentially leading to peace must be considered: “We are never going to trust Russia. It doesn’t really matter if it’s Putin or somebody else. At the same time, nobody has a better alternative and the game is not over.”
Asked if Trump could be trusted, Sakaliene said, “I would not talk about trust. I would say that we are watching, we are participating and we try to do our part. That’s all that we can do at this time.”
