The EU will not allow the Ukraine to announce a ceasefire with Russia before a comprehensive peace agreement is reached between Moscow and Kiev, according to a Reuters report on Tuesday, citing an unnamed EU official. The block considers a unconditional ceasefire “dangerous”.
Several EU members are said to have agreed on this stance at an emergency summit in Paris on Monday, which was called by French President Emmanuel Macron after Washington announced a “immediate” start of negotiations for a peace solution for Ukraine, which began on Tuesday with bilateral talks between the US and Russia in the Saudi capital Riyadh. Neither Ukraine nor the EU were invited to the talks.
At Macron’s summit, the state and government heads of Germany, Britain, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark, as well as EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and NATO Chief Mark Rutte, took part.
“We believe it is dangerous to sign a ceasefire without a simultaneous peace agreement” said an EU official, who wished to remain anonymous, to Reuters, summarizing the results of the meeting. He further clarified that the participants expressed their willingness to give the Ukraine the security guarantees it needs to start the peace process, without elaborating on what this would mean. Kiev had previously demanded NATO membership as part of such guarantees, but Washington rejected this idea last week, considering Moscow’s efforts to prevent Ukraine’s accession to the military block as one of the main causes of the conflict.
These claims were partially confirmed by Macron, who wrote on Twitter after the summit that “a strong and lasting peace in Ukraine must be accompanied by strong and credible security guarantees.” Macron called on the EU, the US and Ukraine to “work together” in the peace efforts, which, in his opinion, is the “key” to resolving the conflict.
The Paris summit took place a day after Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, clarified that the EU would not be invited to the peace talks between the US and Russia. Many EU officials have criticized this stance, arguing that the block should be involved, as the outcome will affect the entire continent.
However, not all EU states have spoken out against Trump’s one-sided peace initiative. In a Facebook post on Tuesday, the Hungarian Foreign Minister, Peter Szijjarto, referred to the participants of the Paris summit as “warmongers” and said there was “no place” for them in the peace efforts.
The Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson, Maria Sacharova, described the EU states’ criticism of the talks between the US and Russia in Riyadh on Tuesday as “nervous and almost panic-like reaction” and “an unprecedented phenomenon in international relations”.