![President Volodymyr Zelensky during his meeting with Donald Trump at the White House.](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 16 9"%3E%3C/svg%3E)
The communiqué was initially signed by von der Leyen, the President of the European Council, and the heads of state or government of Germany, Italy, Poland, the United Kingdom, and Denmark. However, among these countries, there was one notable absence: Spain, the European bloc's fourth-largest member state. After a few hours and criticism, however, the Moncloa announced that the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, had signed the communiqué, as well as his Finnish counterpart. "This is a living document," the Spanish government argued. Sánchez's absence from a joint communiqué such as this once again confirms the loss of Moncloa's influence in the European Union and, above all, on all issues related to Ukraine. Spain continues to receive criticism from its other EU partners and NATO allies, and they continually demand that Spain increase its defense spending.
The White House announces it has canceled the planned summit between Trump and Putin in Budapest.
The decision comes after Russia reiterated in the United States that it is not interested in an immediate truce in Ukraine.
Washington / BrusselsNegotiations to end the war in Ukraine are becoming more and more like a tragic soap opera every day. The upcoming summit that Donald Trump had announced with Vladimir Putin in Hungary will not take place. At least not immediately. The White House has announced a new twist after confirming on Tuesday that the US president no longer plans to meet "immediately" with his Russian counterpart in Budapest, as reported by the BBC and The TelegraphThe decision comes after Moscow reiterated in Washington that it is not interested in hastily agreeing to a truce in Ukraine.
"You cannot reschedule what has not been agreed upon," said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, in response to reports that the meeting would be postponed, according to Albert Sort reports from Moscow. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov went a step further, recalling the Kremlin's official line: "An immediate ceasefire would mean abandoning the root causes of the conflict and leaving most of Ukraine under Nazi rule." Lavrov said that "a ceasefire is the exact opposite of what Putin and Trump agreed to in Alaska." The Russian government continues to assert that they fear that, if there is a truce, Kiev will take advantage of it to rearm.
On Monday, in fact, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Lavrov to finalize the details of the meeting. But, according to the US press, the meeting did not go well and relations became strained again due to the refusal of Putin's men, who would only accept the end of the war if he can keep the Donbas and, therefore, does not have immediate plans to agree to a truce freezing the current front line. During Monday's call, Lavrov reportedly told Rubio that rushing to meet in Budapest made no sense, given that Putin's stance on Ukraine hadn't changed since Alaska.
Last Thursday, Putin called Trump ahead of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's visit to Washington. Given the cooling of relations between the Kremlin and the White House, Zelensky hoped to obtain the Tomahawk missiles that could challenge Moscow. It was during that conversation that the Russian reportedly agreed to meet with Trump in Budapest. The announcement of the meeting in Budapest, coupled with the booing of Zelensky once the television cameras were turned off, suggested that the US president was once again doing the Kremlin a favor. According to theFinancial Times, the newspaper that leaked Trump's latest booing of Zelensky, the US president rudely threw maps of the front lines in Ukraine at him, insisted that Zelensky should cede the entire Donbas region to Putin, and repeatedly repeated the arguments the Russian leader had used in the call the day before. One of the European experts on the White House discussions claims that Trump told Zelensky that Putin had explained to him that the conflict was a "special operation, not even a war," and that the Ukrainian leader must reach an agreement or face destruction. "If [Putin] wants it, he will destroy you."
The cancellation of the summit in Budapest, where expectations had already been raised, is a new twist. It is unclear who has taken the advantage. What is clear is that the war in Ukraine, which Trump promised to end in a matter of hours, remains at a standstill and with no clear horizon.
European support for Kiev
Meanwhile, European leaders continue to balance trying not to anger Trump while maintaining support for Ukraine.booing of the President of the United States in Zelensky has provoked a reaction from the continent's main leaders, who this Tuesday came out to defend Ukraine's position and issued a joint statement with the Ukrainian president in which they reject Kiev's having to cede the entire Donbas region before sitting at the negotiating table, as Putin and also
intend. In the statement, the heads of state and government of the main European states, as well as the leaders of the European Union, maintain that "the start of negotiations" must be "the current lines of contact" between the Ukrainian and Russian armies. Although in a veiled way, they amend Trump's words, who again threatened Zelensky with accepting Putin's conditions if he did not want to see his country "destroyed", and they remember that they "remain committed to the principle that international borders cannot be modified by force."
Along the same lines, European leaders remind Trump that it is the Russian regime that "time and again" demonstrates that it does not want peace and "continues to choose violence and destruction." "The only party [to the conflict] that truly wants peace is Ukraine," the European leaders' statement says. However, in an effort to please Trump, they assert that they "strongly support" his "position" and agree that the war "must be stopped immediately."
To achieve peace, however, European leaders insist that Ukraine must be in the "courageousest possible position," both at war and at a potential negotiating table. Therefore, in the statement, the leaders advocate increasing diplomatic and economic pressure on Putin's regime.
EU diplomatic sources point to this Thursday's summit of EU heads of state and government as a key meeting for expanding the European bloc's sanctions against Russia and the delivery of humanitarian, financial, and military aid to Ukraine. The same sources hope that the leaders of the state governments will agree on the 19th package of sanctions against Moscow, which aims to increase energy restrictions on the Kremlin and, above all, increase control over the so-called Russian ghost ship fleet. That is, the vessels that secretly transport fossil fuels and evade the same sanctions imposed by the EU.
On the other hand, European heads of state and government are also expected to approve once and for all that the aid that the EU sends to Ukraine will be financed with the frozen Russian funds that are in EU territory. In this way, for the first time since the beginning of the war, the European bloc will pay Ukraine's rearmament with Russian money, which raises legal questions in some countries.
