FT: EU prepares for ‘potential’ talks with Vladimir Putin

EU leaders are preparing for potential talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a senior official has said, as European capitals grow frustrated with negotiations to end the war in Ukraine led by US President Donald Trump.

European Council president António Costa said he believed there was “potential” for the EU to negotiate with Putin and that the bloc had the backing of Ukraine’s Zelenskyy to do so, ‘Financial times’ reports.

“I’m talking with the [EU’s] 27 national leaders to see the best way to organise ourselves and to identify what we need effectively to discuss with Russia when it comes the right moment to do this,” Costa said.

The EU’s long-held policy is to oppose discussions or decisions about Ukraine without Kyiv’s involvement. But many leaders fear that peace talks between the US, Russia and Ukraine to end the more than four-year-long war have made little progress and left the EU dangerously sidelined and susceptible to being forced to accept a deal it does not agree with.

Costa said Brussels would “avoid to disturb the process led by President Trump”, and admitted there was no signal from the Kremlin that Putin was willing to sit down with any representative from the bloc.

“Yes, it’s a potential [to negotiate with Putin],” Costa told an event at the European University Institute in Florence. “[But] for the time being, nobody has seen any sign from Russia that they want effectively to engage in serious negotiations.”

Some EU leaders, including Belgium’s Prime Minister Bart De Wever, have raised the prospect of attempting to open a channel for talks with the Kremlin, but others say there is no consensus among the 27 leaders as to who should be appointed to speak for the bloc, when such an effort should be made and what the pitch to Putin would be.

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