Donald Trump’s social media post insisting Ukraine must immediately start peace talks with Russia has set back, and possibly jeopardised, Europe’s carefully laid plans to persuade the US to impose sanctions on Moscow for refusing the US president’s proposal for a 30-day ceasefire, European diplomats have said.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy had no choice but to accept Vladimir Putin’s invitation to talks in Istanbul on Thursday for fear of offending Trump, diplomats said. Putin made the offer in a bid not to alienate the US president, and avoid the growing European pressure on Trump to impose harsher sanctions. Western diplomats say they have no reason to believe that Trump acted in collusion with the Russian leader.
The leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Poland had for the first time gone together to Kyiv at the weekend to underline the call for a 30-day ceasefire that they said should start on Monday.
The aim of the visit by Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz and Donald Tusk was to put pressure on Trump to admit that Putin was stalling, and that the US had no political option but to put swingeing economic sanctions on Russia.
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