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Russian President Vladimir Putin has today warned Moscow is ready for a war with Europe ‘right now’
Putin said ahead of a meeting with US envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner: ‘We are not planning to go to war with Europe, but if Europe wants to and starts, we are ready right now’.
The Russian leader is meeting with American officials to discuss possible peace plans to end the invasion of Ukraine, nearly four years after he sent troops to try and carve up the country.
He said that European powers were making demands on this settlement for Ukraine that Moscow considers ‘absolutely unacceptable’, adding: ‘They are on the side of war’.
Putin also claimed that Europe had locked itself out of negotiations as they can cut off all contact with Russia following the invasion.
The EU’s defence tsar Andrius Kubilius today told Euronews that the continent needs to bolster its standing on the world stage soon if it wants to have a hand in crafting the final version of the possible peace plan.
Kubilius said: ‘We need perhaps to overcome some kind of our mental problems that usually we’re awaiting when some plans will come from Washington.
‘It would be very good for us to have our own plan and then you know to compare with [the] American plan to see what is good, what we want to discuss.
‘I think that we’re moving into that direction. Since really this approach that we need to be more independent both in our defence capabilities but also in our geopolitical standing is coming’.
Late last month, Trump’s 28-point peace plan to end the war in Ukraine was leaked to the media.
European allies slammed the document for being to conciliatory to Russia.
Trump’s agreement would allow Russia to keep occupied territory in Ukraine – Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk – while also getting Ukrainian land that its soldiers don’t occupy.
The agreement freezes the front lines of the conflict at the Ukrainian oblasts of Kherson and Zaporizhia, which would allow Russia to effectively hold onto nearby Mariupol and have a direct line into the Crimean Peninsula.
Another key point is that Ukraine will forever be barred from NATO, the military alliance that Russia has long wanted to keep a buffer between.
Sanctions on Russia would also be lifted and the country would be ”reintegrated into the global economy’.
In exchange, Ukraine would receive looser security guarantees from the US and NATO.
Another draft agreement says NATO would treat any attack on Ukraine as an attack on the entire ‘transatlantic community’, according to Axios.
Kushner and Witkoff arrived in Moscow today to hash these details out further, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for an end to the fighting and a ‘dignified peace’.
The trip followed days of frenzied diplomacy from Florida to Geneva to Abu Dhabi that left Washington ‘optimistic’ it could help end Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II.
They are expected to present Putin with a new version of US plan to end the war, hammered out in recent days after an earlier version raised fears in Kyiv and elsewhere in Europe that it made too many concessions to Moscow.
A Ukrainian delegation could then meet with Witkoff and Kushner as soon as Wednesday, potentially in Brussels, according to a senior Kyiv official.
The US wants to ‘report directly to us after their meeting’ with Putin, Zelensky said during a visit to Ireland, where he is shoring up European support.
But any plan must actually end the war – for good – and not just lead to a pause in the devastating fighting that began with Moscow’s offensive in February 2022, he said.
‘Our common task is to end the war, not just to achieve a pause in hostilities,’ Zelensky said, adding: ‘A dignified peace is needed.’
The meeting between Russia and the US comes at a critical point for Kyiv.
Russian forces have advanced fast in November in eastern Ukraine, and Kyiv has been rocked by graft scandals that ended with the resignation of its top negotiator – Zelensky’s right-hand man.
Moscow has also stepped up drone and missile attacks on Ukraine in recent weeks, with Zelensky accusing the Kremlin of trying to ‘break’ his country.
Zelensky has said he still expects to discuss key issues with the US president, including on territory, and suggested Moscow’s real motivation for the US talks was to ease Western sanctions.
Putin has demanded that Kyiv surrender territory Moscow claims as its own for any deal to be possible.
The diplomatic push comes as Kyiv said that fighting was ongoing in Pokrovsk, the eastern Ukrainian town that Moscow has tried to capture for months – despite Moscow claiming one day earlier that it had successfully seized the town.
More to follow.
