The European Union’s high representative told the Copenhagen Democracy Summit on Tuesday, May 13th, that the Ukrainian and Russian presidents will not meet at peace talks scheduled for Thursday.
Kaja Kallas claims that, while Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was right to accept Vladimir Putin’s invitation to talk in Turkey on Thursday, Putin will decline to attend.
In her address to the Summit, Kallas declared:
I think it’s a good move if they sit down, I think it should be between Zelenskyy and Putin, but I don’t think [Putin] dares, I guess.
Such speculation reflects the comparative irrelevance of the EU—some of whose member states are part of the “coalition of the willing”—to a fast-moving situation with Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump in the driving seat. Even the authoritarian hosts of different ceasefire discussions, such as Ankara and Riyadh, appear to gaining influence at the expense of Brussels.
