French President Emmanuel Macron will be hosting a make-or-break summit on Monday with European leaders, including British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, to talk about the war in Ukraine. The summit comes after US officials reportedly said Europe would be excluded from any future peace talks about the war.
The French presidency said on Sunday Macron had called for the “consultation talks” and that they would address the tumultuous change in the US approach to Ukraine and the attendant risks to the security of the European continent.
Others at the summit meeting will be German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Ursula von der Leyen and Antonio Costa from the European Union.
US President Donald Trump stunned European allies in NATO and Ukraine last week when he announced he had held a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin without consulting with them and would start a peace process.
Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg jolted Europe further on Saturday when he said it would not have a seat at the table for Ukraine peace talks, even after Washington sent a questionnaire to European capitals to ask what they could contribute to security guarantees for Kyiv.
The US has also asked European allies in NATO what they would need from Washington to participate in Ukraine security arrangements, according to a document seen by Reuters on Sunday.
Scores of such summits have revealed the 27-member EU to be hesitating, divided and working on a patchy strategy to stop the war in Ukraine at its doorstep and engaging with Russia, three years into Moscow's war against its neighbour.
Some countries were unhappy that the meeting was only for selected leaders and not a full EU summit, EU officials said. The French presidency sought to assuage those misgivings saying Monday’s meeting could lead to other formats “with the objective of gathering all partners interested in peace and European security”.
