Ukraine and Europe reduced to bit players in US-Russian plans for peace

A senior White House team is heading to Saudi Arabia ahead of possible peace talks on Ukraine amid consternation that the country is being left out of negotiations over its own future.

Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and national security adviser Mike Waltz were planning to head to Riyadh to begin setting up talks, which will also sideline Europe in discussions that will determine the future safety of the continent.

“I am going tonight,” Mr Witkoff said in a Fox News interview. “I’ll be travelling there with the national security adviser, and we’ll be having meetings at the direction of the president, and hopefully we’ll make some really good progress."

Meanwhile, Sir Keir Starmer on Monday is due to meet in Paris with the French president Emmanuel Macron, who will also host German chancellor Olaf Scholz, Nato secretary general Mark Rutte and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen at a hastily convened summit to discuss how to deal with the Trump peace proposals.

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The urgent meeting in Paris follows a week of attacks on Nato by Mr Trump’s officials, who also gave away some of Ukraine’s key negotiating cards before any talks with Putin could begin.

Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, has been supported by most of Nato’s leadership in maintaining that there can be “no negotiations on Ukraine without Ukraine”.

On top of that European leaders have insisted that talks about the future of the continent should not be conducted without Europeans.

But there has been no invitation for Ukraine, nor for Europe, to join the talks planned for Saudi Arabia. This raises the prospect that two key players would be reduced to secondary negotiations while Russia and the US talked over their heads.

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Mr Trump has signalled that he was keen to see sanctions against Russia lifted and his overtures to talk about Ukraine have been warmly received by the Kremlin.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and US secretary of state Marco Rubio discussed the removal of “unilateral barriers” imposed by the Biden administration, a statement from Lavrov’s office said.

The Russian statement said that the two foreign ministers had agreed to maintain contacts to resolve problems in bilateral relations, “in the interests of removing the unilateral barriers to mutually beneficial trade, economic and investment cooperation inherited from the previous administration”.

President Zelensky has argued that the US is critical to the security of Ukraine in any future deal with Russia, but the Trump administration has ruled this out.

Europe and the US agree that Ukraine must negotiate from the position of strength but any suggestion that Russia would face sanctions relief would, normally, form part of a negotiation rather than be offered as an objective by Ukraine’s allies in advance.

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Nato allies have even been asked a series of questions by the US State Department that demand details of what future security arrangements they would make to ensure Ukrainian integrity as part of a peace agreement with Moscow.

These include, according to the Reuters news agency: “What do you view as a Europe-backed security guarantee or assurance that would serve as a sufficient deterrent to Russia while also ensuring this conflict ends with an enduring peace settlement?

“Which European and/or third countries do you believe could or would participate in such an arrangement? Are there any countries you believe would be indispensable?

“Would your country be willing to deploy its troops to Ukraine as part of a peace settlement?”

Answers to these questions and other more detailed responses being sought by the Americans are unlikely to be forthcoming from Nato partners of the US.

“They give important tactical and strategic details which, if leaked, would enormously benefit the Russians ahead of talks,” one senior former Nato officer said.