Proposed Ukraine land concessions are Putin’s trap, EU top diplomat tells BBC

The top diplomat of the European Union (EU) has warned against pushing Ukraine to give up territories to Russia as part of a future peace deal.

Speaking in her first UK interview since EU leaders joined Donald Trump’s White House peace talks with Ukraine, Kaja Kallas told the BBC’s Today programme that letting Russia keep Ukrainian territories was a “trap that Putin wants us to walk into”.

The Donbas region in eastern Ukraine has long been contested by Russia, with military aggression forcing 1.5 million Ukrainians to flee over the past decade.

Ukraine has consistently rejected conceding Donbas to the Kremlin in exchange for peace, though Trump stressed the need for “swapping of territories”.

Kallas – who has been placed on the Kremlin’s “wanted list” – also spoke at length about “credible and robust” security guarantees for Ukraine.

She admitted that there were not many “concrete steps” for a deterring force at this stage in negotiations.

“The strongest security guarantee is a strong Ukraine army,” she said, outlining the importance of establishing guarantees that were “not just on paper”.

She said it was up to member states of the “coalition of the willing” to determine exactly what they could contribute, and that it was not yet clear in what capacity those forces would operate.

Leaders from key EU countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Finland, joined Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for talks at the White House last week, days after Trump hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin in a military base in Alaska.

On the Alaska summit, Kallas said that Putin got “everything he wanted” and that would impact his interest in negotiating a peace deal.

“He got such a welcoming and he wanted sanctions not to be put in place, which he also achieved.

“Putin is just laughing, not stopping the killing but increasing the killing,” Kallas said. “We are forgetting that Russia has not made one single concession.”

She added that the EU had put together the 19th package of sanctions to pressure the Russian leader into further discussions.

Meanwhile, Trump on Thursday set a two-week time frame for evaluating peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.

“I would say within two weeks we’re going to know one way or the other,” he said in a telephone interview with Todd Starnes, a host for right-wing media outlet Newsmax.

“After that, we’ll have to maybe take a different tack,” Trump said.

But Zelensky cast doubt on Putin showing willingness for a meeting with him.

In comments released to reporters on Thursday, reported by the Agence France-Presse news agency, Zelensky accused Russia of avoiding the “necessity” of holding a meeting between the two countries’ leaders.

“Current signals from Russia are, to be honest, indecent. They’re trying to avoid the necessity to meet. They don’t want to end this war.”

He also put pressure on Western allies, saying Ukraine would like to “have an understanding of the security guarantees architecture within seven to 10 days”.

“We need to understand which country will be ready to do what at each specific moment,” he added.

Zelensky has criticised the significant air attack by Russia early on Thursday, saying it was behaving as if there were no global efforts to stop the war.

Eleven different locations in Ukraine were hit, killing at least one and injuring more than a dozen in the western city of Lviv close to the Polish border.

A number of European leaders earlier echoed EU and Ukrainian views about Putin’s unwillingness to engage with a peace deal.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb said Putin was “rarely to be trusted”, and that he was sceptical about Putin eventually agreeing to a bilateral meeting with Zelensky.

French President Emmanuel Macron called the Russian leader “a predator, and an ogre at our doorstep” and expressed “the greatest doubt” that he would be willing to work towards peace.

Both leaders were in attendance at White House peace talks on Monday.

Zelensky has said he is willing to meet Putin “in any format”, but told reporters on Thursday that there was still no sign from Moscow that they “truly intend to engage in substantive negotiations”.