Image Credit: KRISTINA KORMILITSYNA / Contributor / Getty 
On Wednesday Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aide Yury Ushakov invited European leaders to the Kremlin for diplomatic negotiations regarding the Ukraine war. This invite is notable as the United States has been acting as an intermediary between the two warring parties, having just held a meeting with officials from Kiev on Sunday and Moscow on Tuesday which resulted in nothing of substance.
“The Europeans are refusing all contacts… even though [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has repeatedly said that if any European leaders want to talk, they are welcome to come to Moscow,” Ushakov said. “For our part, we have nothing against resuming contacts.”
Washington recently released a peace plan based on 28 points, but after a weekend of European leaders picking apart the various details, the resulting proposal became unacceptable to Russia. During this process, Washington relayed the developments back and forth between the parties.
One of the major points of contention are territorial disputes – Kiev and its European enablers refuse to cede any land to Russia while Moscow refuses to end the war if they cannot maintain possession of some eastern Ukrainian territories. This issue was not resolved in Tuesday’s negotiations, bringing the two warring nations no closer to peace.
Another point of contention are security guarantees – Kiev and Europe want Ukraine to join NATO while Moscow refuses to accept a NATO membership for Ukraine as part of ending the war.
While President Donald Trump’s administration has been trying to negotiate a settlement between Ukraine and Russia since the beginning of his second presidency, Kiev’s European enablers have coerced and even bribed Ukraine to continue fighting.
A direct meeting between European and Russian leadership may prove more productive than utilizing the U.S. which has signaled on multiple occasions it will walk away from unproductive diplomatic efforts.
RT detailed the Russian perspective on the Ukraine war and where Moscow stands in relation to diplomacy with Europe:
The EU has been actively supporting Kiev with both financial and military aid and has imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia. The bloc has also been seeking to seize Russian sovereign assets frozen at the Euroclear clearing house in Belgium to fund Ukraine. Moscow has warned that it would regard any such move as outright “theft.”
The bloc has de facto rejected a Ukraine peace plan presented by the administration of US President Donald Trump last month, and has put forward its own set of conditions, which Moscow dismissed as “unconstructive.”
On Tuesday, Putin said the EU is still living under the illusion that it can inflict a “strategic defeat” upon Russia through the Ukraine conflict. He stated that the concept was unrealistic from the very beginning, but Brussels cannot bring itself to admit that it has been wrong all along.
Putin met Zelensky years before the Special Military Operation, in 2019, and has been open to meeting with the Ukrainian dictator this year as well.
