By David Crowe
London: European leaders are moving to intensify economic and military pressure on Russia to force it to negotiate a peace deal with Ukraine, amid a collapse in the latest effort to set up a summit to broker a ceasefire.
The move confirms the financial and military support for Ukraine after the halt to a potential summit announced last Thursday in a bid by US President Donald Trump to meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to end the war.
US President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday.Credit: AP
“We must ramp up the pressure on Russia’s economy and its defence industry, until Putin is ready to make peace,” said leaders from the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, the European Union and five other nations.
“We are developing measures to use the full value of Russia’s immobilised sovereign assets so that Ukraine has the resources it needs.”
While Trump did not put a date on a meeting with Putin, which was meant to take place in Hungary, the failure of the plan highlights the objections in the West to the Russian leader’s demand for more land from Ukraine in any settlement.
When asked early Wednesday AEDT why his planned summit in Budapest was put on hold, Trump said he did not want to have a wasted meeting. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said he had not made a determination about the meeting but that he still saw a chance for a Ukraine-Russia ceasefire.
Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in Moscow on Tuesday.Credit: AP
Trump has changed his view of the war over the past few weeks, saying on Monday that he did not think Ukraine could win and suggesting on Friday that Russia could be allowed to keep the territory it had already taken in eastern Ukraine.
The remarks contrasted with his declaration on September 25 that Russia was a “paper tiger” and that Ukraine might be able to gain territory if the war continued.
While Trump applied pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to cede territory to Russia when the two met in the White House on Friday, multiple reports said Zelensky refused and the US president accepted his position.
Zelensky has called for more European support to maximise pressure on Europe, putting the war on the agenda at a meeting of European Union national leaders and a separate gathering this week of the “coalition of the willing” led by the UK and France.
Donald Trump greets Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on Friday.Credit: Bloomberg
In a blow to Zelensky’s hopes for more weapons, Trump declined to release Tomahawk missiles for sale to Ukraine after objections from Russia.
The halt to American funding has led European leaders to seek more ways to finance Zelensky’s plans, including the option of lending Ukraine €140 billion ($250 billion) by using Russian assets in Europe as security.
The plan would not confiscate the Russian assets – which are held by the Euroclear finance agency and have been frozen since the full-scale invasion in February 2022 – but would use them as collateral for the loan to help Ukraine buy more weapons.
The statement from European leaders, issued on Tuesday, highlighted the plan to use sovereign Russian assets but did not spell out how this would be done.
“We remain committed to the principle that international borders must not be changed by force,” said the statement.
“Russia’s stalling tactics have shown time and time again that Ukraine is the only party serious about peace. We can all see that Putin continues to choose violence and destruction.”
The joint statement came from Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, Chancellor Freidrich Merz of Germany, President Emmanuel Macron of France, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy, Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland, Prime Minister Jonas Store of Norway, President Alexander Stubb of Finland, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez of Spain and Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson of Sweden.
It was also issued by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa, as well as Zelensky.
Bloomberg reported that European nations were working with Ukraine on a 12-point plan to end the war along the current battle lines.
Under the proposal, Ukraine would receive security guarantees, funds to repair war damage and a pathway to rapidly join the European Union, the Bloomberg report said.
The proposal also envisaged the return of all deported children to Ukraine and the exchanges of prisoners. Both sides would enter into negotiations on the governance of occupied territories, though neither Europe nor Ukraine would legally recognise any occupied land as Russian, it said.
Russia reiterated its previous terms for reaching a peace deal with Ukraine in a private communique sent to the US over the weekend, according to a Reuters report citing US officials without naming them.
Trump and Putin met in Alaska in August.Credit: AP
Russia demanded that it take control of all of Ukraine’s Donbas region, one of the US officials said, a stance that effectively rejected Trump’s view in recent days that the frontlines should be frozen at their prevailing locations.
After Trump and Zelensky spoke on Friday, Reuters and other media outlets reported that US officials told Zelensky of the Kremlin proposal for Ukraine to give up the Donbas region in return for small parts of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. Zelensky pushed back, and Trump later said publicly the prevailing frontlines should be frozen.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke by phone on Monday, but could not make progress towards a summit of their leaders in Hungary.
The Kremlin said there was no clear date and that “serious preparation” for a summit was needed and that may take time.
“Listen, we have an understanding of the presidents, but we cannot postpone what has not been finalised,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
He said neither Trump nor Putin had given exact dates.
With Reuters
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