EU foreign policy chief Kaza Kallas has said she fears talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff will put pressure on Ukraine to make concessions with the two men expected to meet on Tuesday.
Witkoff, the property developer-turned-envoy who was recently exposed for training Russian officials to win Trump’s favor, is arriving in Moscow after leading the U.S. delegation to talks with Ukraine over the weekend, nearly four years after Russia launched a full-scale invasion.
“I fear that all the pressure will be put on the victim, that is, Ukraine will have to make concessions and obligations,” Callas said of the upcoming Vitkoff-Putin meeting. “However for the sake of peace, we must not lose sight of the fact that it is actually Russia that started this war and it is Russia that is continuing this war and it is Russia that is actually targeting civilians, civilian infrastructure every day to cause as much damage as possible.”
European leaders have been alarmed by the US plan unveiled last month to end the war, which was heavily tilted in Russia’s favor. This included giving Moscow territory in eastern Ukraine that it did not yet control, while forcing Kiev to limit its troop numbers and abandon its ambitions to join NATO. Although the plan has since been changed, Ukraine’s European allies are concerned about any plan that could ensure a forced change of borders and fail to punish war crimes.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday that Russia should not be rewarded for its aggression, as he launched a diplomatic effort to drum up support from European allies. “We also need to make sure that Russia itself does not perceive anything as a reward for this war,” he said at a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron.
The Ukrainian leader held talks with a dozen other leaders, including Britain’s Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, and the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz.
Zelensky said the talks with the French president lasted several hours and the main focus was on ending the war and negotiations on security guarantees. He wrote on X, “Peace must really be durable. The war must end as soon as possible.”
From Paris the pair also spoke to Vitkoff and Rustam Umerov, the head of the Ukrainian delegation during talks with the US.
Macron said that only Ukraine can decide on its territories in peace talks with Russia and that Europeans should be at the negotiating table to ensure security guarantees for Ukraine.
Speaking with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk after talks with Zelensky, Merz said there should be “no prescriptive peace” in Ukraine and that Kiev and its European allies must join any agreement to end the war.
“We have a clear course of action: no decisions on Ukraine and Europe without Ukrainians and Europeans,” he said.
Kallas, who said efforts to end the war in Ukraine could enter a “decisive week”, warned that allowing Russia to change borders by force would set a dangerous precedent for the entire world.
Earlier in the day, he described weekend talks between the US and Ukraine in Florida as “difficult but productive”. Asked whether he had confidence in the US to find a good solution for Ukraine, he said: “The Ukrainians are alone out there. If they are with the Europeans, they will certainly be much stronger but I am confident that the Ukrainians will stand up for themselves.”
Zelensky suggested that Ukrainian and US negotiators had not yet fully worked out amendments to the proposed US plan. “There are some difficult issues that still need to be worked out,” he said Monday.
After newsletter promotion
Witkoff is expected to arrive in Russia with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Putin’s spokesman did not say whether Kushner, who has played an active role in talks on the Gaza peace deal, would also attend the meeting with the Russian president.
Two of Trump’s trusted envoys attended weekend talks between senior Ukrainian and US officials at a private golf club developed by Witkoff’s company in Florida.
After the meeting, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed optimism for an end to the war. “There’s still more work to be done. It’s delicate,” Rubio said. “There are a lot of moving parts, and obviously there’s another party involved here … that has to be part of the equation, and that will continue this weekend when Mr. Witkoff travels to Moscow.”
Ukraine’s president is under pressure following the sudden resignation of his Cabinet chief and closest adviser, Andriy Yermak, in response to a sweeping anti-corruption investigation, which has become the most serious scandal of Zelensky’s presidency.
Meanwhile the Ukrainian leader is expected to make his first official visit to Ireland on Tuesday, while his Defense Minister Denis Schmihl was in Brussels on Monday for talks with his EU counterparts.
Shyamal said he has informed defense ministers about “the most urgent needs of our troops”, primarily in air defence. He welcomed the Netherlands’ announcement that it will contribute an additional €250m to a NATO initiative to purchase arms and ammunition for Ukraine from the United States.
The surge in diplomatic activity came after a study showed Russia made its biggest advance into Ukraine for a year in November. Russian forces captured 701 square km (270 square miles), the second-largest territorial gain of the war since November 2024, according to an AFP analysis of data from the US-based Institute for the Study of War. The study did not cover the early months of the war when the front line was highly dynamic.
<a href