UKRAINE - European allies have rallied behind Ukraine in a renewed surge of support, insisting that any peace talks with Russia must include Kyiv.
“The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine,” said a joint statement issued by the leaders of the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Finland and the European Commission.
Their statement came after US President Donald Trump announced he would meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday in a renewed effort to end the war.
Concerned that Ukraine will not be invited to its own peace talks, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that any agreements without Kyiv would amount to ‘dead decisions’.
Late on Saturday, a White House official said that Trump would be willing to hold a trilateral meeting with both Putin and Zelenskyy - but for now, it remains just the two of them, as initially requested by the Russian leader.
Trump has previously suggested that he could start by meeting only with Putin, telling reporters he planned to ‘start off with Russia’. However, the US president also said that he believed ‘we have a shot at’ organising a trilateral meeting with both Putin and Zelenskyy.
Whether Putin would agree to this is unclear - he has refused several opportunities to hold direct talks and the two leaders have not met face-to-face since Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago.
Macron, Zelenskyy and Starmer spoke on the phone on Saturday. (Pic: The New York Times)