For more than a year, there has been no progress worth mentioning in the ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine led by the Trump administration. The Europeans, who have been blocked from the negotiating table by the two hegemons, the United States and Russia, have long been unable to bear it.
If Putin and Trump think that Europeans are the ones footing the bill, they are wrong, because Brussels’ dissatisfaction is already written on their faces. Kaya Karas, the "female head" of the EU's security and foreign affairs affairs, is going to flip the table this time: Since the weak Trump does not dare to look down on Putin, whom he has worshiped all his life, and since the Trump administration will only force Ukrainian President Zelensky to make unilateral concessions, it is better for the Europeans to give Putin a "hard dish".
Top EU diplomat Karas | AP
Top EU diplomat Kaya Karas said on Tuesday (February 10) that she was drafting a list of concessions that Russia must make to ensure long-term peace in Ukraine, as U.S.-led talks aimed at ending the four-year-old Russia-Ukraine war have made little progress, the Associated Press reported.
Over the past week, as Russian and Ukrainian delegations were in Abu Dhabi for another round of talks hosted by the U.S. presidential envoy, Russian forces attacked a Ukrainian market using cluster munitions, killing seven people.
Negotiations last week yielded no breakthrough other than an agreement to conduct a prisoner exchange.
U.S. President Trump claimed during the 2024 campaign that he could end the war within one day, and later said it would be within 100 days. But now he has given Russian President Vladimir Putin a deadline to continue the war until June this year – a deadline for a peace agreement.
Despite Trump's repeated claims that he believed Putin wanted peace, European leaders were convinced that Russia had never negotiated seriously. Because Putin doubts the Trump administration can represent Europe and Ukraine.
Trump has always been an admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin and has never criticized Putin for his war on Ukraine.
Based on the above reality, Karas said that the EU has begun to develop a "sustainable peace plan" to force Moscow to submit.
"We have just seen an intensification of Russian bombing of civilian facilities in Ukraine during these talks," said Karas, the EU's top security and foreign policy official. She was referring to the Russian military's continued attacks on Ukraine's power grid and heating systems during the coldest winter of the war.
Karas said that the 27 EU countries are currently "very grateful" to the diplomatic efforts of the United States, but "to achieve a sustainable peace, everyone sitting around the table, including Russians and Americans, need to understand that any decision you make needs the consent of the Europeans."
"We also have conditions," Karas told reporters in Brussels. "We should put these conditions on the Russians, not on the Ukrainians who are already under tremendous pressure."
Those conditions could include requiring Russia to return tens of thousands of Ukrainian children who may have been abducted, as well as limiting the size of Russia's armed forces after the war (Russia insists on limiting the size of Ukraine's military).
"The Ukrainian army is not the problem, the Russian army is. Russian military spending is. If they invest so much in military, they will use it again," Karas said.
It is reported that this draft of the European "war ticket" may be circulated among EU member states in the next few days and may be discussed at the EU Foreign Ministers' Meeting on February 23.
In December last year, the EU announced an interest-free loan of 90 billion euros to Ukraine.
Shifting war pressure from Ukraine to Putin
Karas pointed out that Ukraine currently relies on the support of the United States in the hope of ending the war, but this dependence has forced it to make almost all concessions.
"Putting pressure on the weaker party may always get results faster, but it's just a dead letter saying we have peace. It doesn't guarantee Ukraine or anyone else against another Russian attack."
Karas said the Europeans do not want to start an independent peace negotiation track (which is likely to be directly ignored by Russia). Russian officials have said they are waiting for the Trump administration to fulfill the promises he made to Russian President Vladimir Putin at last year's summit.
Karas described Russia's territorial claims as "absolutely extremist demands" and insisted that Europe must "change the narrative" and increase pressure on Putin.
"Everyone wants this war to stop except the Russians," she said. "We can push them to the point where they have to end the war, but they're not there yet. Unfortunately, it's not a simple solution."
Citing recent intelligence assessments, Karas said Putin was struggling to recruit soldiers to continue his war effort and insisted that EU sanctions were hurting Russia's economy, causing it to suffer from high inflation.
"We need to get from where they're pretending to negotiate to where they're actually negotiating, but we're not there yet."
russian president putin
The struggles of the Trump administration over the past year or so since it came to power have shown that the more Americans want a "quick victory" and even let Ukraine cede territory in exchange for peace, the more they are manipulated by Putin and the more they condone Putin's more brutal attacks on Ukraine.
However, EU leaders, who are close to this war, value "long-term security" more. Karas was actually shouting to Trump: "Don't just force Ukraine to cede territory and pay compensation. Putin also has to spit out something! Otherwise, this victory will belong to Putin."
Extended reading: Putin deceived Trump: Zelensky was asked by the United States to cease the war before June
