Europeans say Ukraine battle lines must be start point for talks, as Trump-Putin summit plans hit snags

Audio By Carbonatix

Enlarge

(Corrects Orban’s title to prime minister from president in penultimate paragraph)

(Reuters) -European leaders said on Tuesday that current battle lines in Ukraine must be the starting point for any peace talks, as preparations for a summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin appeared to have hit a snag.

Trump, who last week spoke by phone to Putin and met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said he aims to hold a summit with the Russian leader in the Hungarian capital Budapest within two weeks in a push to end the war in Ukraine.

But summit preparations appear to be held up after a preliminary meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov – expected to take place in Budapest on Thursday – was postponed.

Lavrov and Rubio spoke by phone on Monday. Lavrov’s deputy, Sergei Ryabkov, said on Tuesday it was premature to speak about the timing of any face-to-face meeting between them.

EUROPEANS WANT TRUMP TO EXTRACT CONCESSIONS THIS TIME

Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, was in Washington on Tuesday, where he posted on Facebook: “We have some serious days ahead”.

Ukraine’s European allies have been concerned that Trump could meet Putin for a second time without getting any serious concessions from the Russian leader. Putin rebuffed Trump’s call for a ceasefire when Trump hosted Putin in Alaska in August.

In a statement on Tuesday, the leaders of European powers including Britain, France, Germany and the EU, said they “strongly support President Trump’s position that the fighting should stop immediately, and that the current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations”.

Ukraine and its European allies have long insisted on an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine at present battle lines before peace talks, a position Trump publicly endorsed last Friday after a meeting with Zelenskiy at the White House.

Moscow has said it wants Ukraine to cede more territory as one of several conditions it has raised for a ceasefire.

Reuters and other news organisations reported that Trump’s meeting with Zelenskiy behind closed doors last week was contentious, with the U.S. president repeatedly using profanity and pushing Zelenskiy to accept some Russian demands.

But Zelenskiy has painted the meeting as a success because it ended with Trump publicly backing a ceasefire at the present lines, Kyiv’s longstanding position.

European leaders are due to meet this week with Zelenskiy as their guest, first at an EU summit and then at a meeting of the “coalition of the willing” countries discussing a security force to guarantee a post-war settlement in Ukraine. Russia rejects such an international security force.

PUTIN NEEDS TO FLY OVER EU

The choice of Budapest as a venue for a Putin-Trump meeting is contentious within the EU, where Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban is an outlier as one of the few leaders to maintain warm relations with Russia following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Any trip to Budapest would require Putin to fly through the air space of other EU countries. Poland said on Tuesday it could force Putin’s plane down and arrest him on an international warrant if he flies over its territory, but Bulgaria said Putin could use its airspace to reach the meeting.

(Writing by Peter GraffEditing by Ros Russell)