BERLIN (AP) — European leaders are expected to bolster support for Ukraine on Monday as it faces pressure from Washington to quickly accept a U.S.-brokered peace deal.
After talks in Berlin on Sunday between US envoys and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukrainian and European officials are set to continue a series of meetings in an effort to ensure the continent’s peace and security in the face of an increasingly assertive Russia.
Finnish President Alexander Stubb, one of the main European interlocutors between US President Donald Trump and Zelenskyy, was seen in the center of Berlin on Monday morning.
Zelenskyy met with Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner at the German chancellery on Sunday in hopes of ending the nearly four-year war.
Washington has tried for months to push through each side’s demands as Trump pushes for a quick end to the war in Russia and grows increasingly exasperated by delays. The search for possible compromises has encountered major obstacles, including control of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, which is largely occupied by Russian forces.
The US government said in a social media post on Witkoff’s account late Sunday after the five-hour meeting that “a lot of progress has been made.”
Earlier in the day, Zelenskyy expressed his willingness to drop his country’s bid to join NATO if the US and other Western nations offer Kiev security guarantees similar to those offered to NATO members. But Ukraine continued to reject the US push to cede territory to Russia.
Putin wants Ukraine to withdraw its forces from the part of Donetsk region still under its control, among key conditions for peace.
The Russian president has also presented Ukraine’s bid to join NATO as a major threat to Moscow’s security and a reason to launch a full-scale invasion in February 2022. The Kremlin has called on Ukraine to drop its bid to join the alliance as part of any possible peace settlement.
Zelenskyy emphasized that any Western security assurances should be legally binding and supported by the US Congress.
The Kremlin said on Monday that it expected to be updated on the Berlin talks by the US side once the talks were over.
Asked if the talks could be concluded by Christmas, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov described trying to predict a potential time frame for a peace deal as a “thankless task”.
“I can only speak for the Russian side, for President Putin,” Peskov said. “He is open to peace, to serious peace, and to serious decisions. He is absolutely not open to any tricks to bide his time.”
Meanwhile in London, the new head of the MI6 spy agency is due to warn on Monday about how Putin’s determination to export chaos around the world is rewriting the rules of conflict and creating new security challenges.
Blaise Metrewali will use her first public speech as head of the UK’s foreign intelligence service to say Britain faces increasingly unpredictable and interconnected threats, with a focus on “aggressive, expansionist” Russia.
Drone strikes continue
Russia fired 153 drones of various types into Ukraine overnight Sunday into Monday, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. The air force said early Monday that 133 drones had been neutralized, while another 17 had hit their targets.
In Russia, the defense ministry said on Monday that forces destroyed 130 Ukrainian drones overnight. Another 16 drones were then destroyed between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m. local time on Monday.
Eighteen drones were shot down over Moscow, the Russian Defense Ministry announced.
Flights were temporarily grounded at the city’s Domodedovo and Zhukovsky airports as part of safety measures, officials said.
Details of damage and casualty figures were not immediately available.
“Pax Americana” is over
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who led European efforts to support Ukraine alongside French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, said on Saturday that “the decades of ‘Pax Americana’ are largely over for us in Europe and for us in Germany.”
“Pax Americana” refers to the postwar dominance of the US as a superpower that brought relative peace to the globe.
Merz warned that Putin’s goal is “a fundamental change of borders in Europe, the restoration of the old Soviet Union within its borders.”
“If Ukraine falls, he will not stop,” Merz warned during a party conference in Munich.
Meanwhile, Macron promised on Sunday on the X social platform that “France is and will remain by Ukraine’s side to build a solid and lasting peace – one that can guarantee the security and sovereignty of Ukraine and Europe in the long term.”
Putin has denied plans to attack any European ally.
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Ciobanu reported from Warsaw, Poland. Pietro De Cristofaro in Berlin, Illia Novikov in Kiev, Ukraine and Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England contributed to this report.