Putin says European leaders were on side of war: Accuses Europe of sabotaging deal on Ukraine.
Moscow – Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia was “ready” for war if Europe seeks one, accusing the continent’s leaders of trying to sabotage a deal on the Ukraine conflict before he met with US envoys.
The comments came as US envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner were in Moscow for high-stakes talks on ending the nearly four-year war, which were preceded by days of intense diploma-cy. “We are not planning to go to war with Europe, but if Europe wants to and starts, we are ready right now,” Putin told reporters in Moscow. “They have no peaceful agenda, they are on the side of war,” he added, repeating his claim that European leaders were hindering US attempts to broker peace in Ukraine.
He added that European changes to Trump’s latest plan to end the war “aimed solely at one thing — to completely block the entire peace process and put forward demands that are absolutely unacceptable for Russia”. Fearing further Russian aggression, Europe has repeatedly said an unfair peace should not be imposed on Ukraine.
The Trump envoys are now seeking to finalise the plan with the approval of Moscow and Kyiv.
A leaked set of 28 U.S. draft peace proposals emerged last week, alarming Ukrainian and European officials who said it bowed to Moscow’s main de-mands on NATO, Russian control of a fifth of Ukraine and restrictions on Ukraine’s army.
European powers then came up with a counter-proposal for peace and at talks in Geneva, the United States and Ukraine said they had created an “updated and refined peace framework” to end the war.
Putin said on Tuesday that Europe had locked itself out of the peace talks but was now seeking to undermine Trump’s efforts by tabling proposals that it knew were unacceptable to Russia. “They are on the side of war,” Putin said of the European powers. “We can clearly see that all these changes are aimed at only one thing: to block the en-tire peace process altogether, to make such demands which are absolutely unacceptable to Russia.” “If Europe suddenly wants to start a war with us and starts it,” Putin said, then it would end so swiftly for Europe that there would be no one to negotiate with in Europe. Putin also threatened to sever Ukraine’s access to the sea in response to drone attacks on tankers of Russia’s “shadow fleet” in the Black Sea.
As Putin spoke, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner were walking on Red Square near the mausoleum of Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin with the Russian president’s investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev. Witkoff and Kushner were due to meet Putin later in the Kremlin.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, speaking in Dublin, said everything would depend on the talks in Moscow.
“There will be no easy solutions… It is important that everything is fair and open, so that there are no games behind Ukraine’s back,” he said.
Putin, who ordered troops into Ukraine nearly four years ago, has said the discussions so far are not about a draft agreement but about a set of pro-posals that he said last week “could be the basis for future agreements”.
Putin has said he is ready to talk peace but that if Ukraine refuses an agree-ment, then Russia’s forces will advance further and take more Ukrainian terri-tory.
A Russian source said the Trump administration’s attempts to find peace rep-resented the best chance to end the war since talks with Kyiv broke down shortly after Moscow’s 2022 invasion.
Conflict first erupted in eastern Ukraine in 2014 after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution. Russia annexed Crimea and Moscow-backed separatists battled Kyiv’s armed forces in eastern Ukraine.
