On Wednesday, Russia criticized European diplomatic talks ahead of the planned Alaska summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“We consider the consultations sought by the Europeans to be politically and practically insignificant,” Russian foreign ministry deputy spokesman Alexey Fadeev said in a briefing.
“The Europeans verbally support the diplomatic efforts of Washington and Moscow to resolve the crisis around Ukraine, but in fact the European Union is sabotaging them,” he said.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders were to hold urgent talks with Trump on Wednesday, hoping to convince him to respect Kyiv’s interests in his looming summit with Putin on Friday.
The summit is so far planned to go ahead without Zelensky.
Zelensky has called for a full ceasefire–a proposal which Russia has rejected.
On Wednesday Fadeev said the EU rhetoric “about supposed support for finding peaceful solutions is just another attempt to stall the settlement process”.
“We will monitor the actions of European countries in connection with the upcoming summit and hope that no steps will be taken that would prevent it from taking place and reaching constructive agreements,” he said.
