Europe races to influence Trump in front of Putin Call

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The European leaders should speak to Donald Trump on Monday to help the US president prepare for his planned call with Vladimir Putin in a crucial week for the prescribed Ukraine peace talks.

Trump’s administration has taken on his call with the Russian president, her first publicly open encounter for almost three months, as a critical moment for the determination of concrete parameters for a permanent settlement against the war.

Long concerned that the US President could complete a deal with the Kremlin that would overlook the interests of Ukraine, the European leaders drove at the same time to influence Trump’s thinking in advance.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz He said that on Monday he would join the French President Emmanuel Macron and Sir Keir Starrer, the British Prime Minister, to call Trump since Friday.

“We can only hope that there will be further progress,” said Merz, who argued together with London and Paris to increase the pressure on Moscow. “My fixed impression is that both Europeans and the Americans are determined to work together, but now also intentionally to ensure that this terrible war will soon end.”

During a flood of diplomacy in the past 10 days, Putin has given little the basis to get involved in the terms defined by other terms and to meet the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Turkey last week, even though he has proposed conversations between the two sides.

While the US government has become more impatient with Russia, Trump’s team was guarded in her criticism of Putin. Trump said on Friday that he organized the direct call with Putin because he always thought that a peace agreement was not possible “without me”. It is expected that Trump speaks to Zelenskyy after calling the Kremlin.

Zelenskyy met in Rome on Sunday with the US Vice President JD Vance, the first encounter between the two men since her sill in the White House in February. Zelenskyy called it a “good meeting” and said it belonged to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

“We talked about the negotiations in Istanbul, in which the Russians sent a delegation with a low level without decision -making,” said Zelenskyy. “I confirmed the willingness of Ukraine to real diplomacy and emphasized the importance of a complete and unconditional ceasefire as soon as possible.”

Rubio said that his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov told him on Saturday that Moscow would prepare a document in which “their requirements for an armistice would be described, which would then lead to broader negotiations”.

“We do not want to be involved in this process of endless conversations, there must be some progress, some movements forward,” he said in an interview with CBS.

If a document is agreed “in the next few days” in which both sides show willingness to make concessions, “then I think we can feel good if we continue to be committed”. “On the other hand, if we don’t see very productively, we may have a different assessment,” he said.

Kyiv and its European allies are afraid that the Trump government, when it goes away from peace talks, will also be the support of the US military support for Ukraine and gave Moscow another advantage of the battlefield.

Zelenskyy coordinated with European leaders and joined Trump on Friday. During a visit to Rome on Sunday, Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, said that the next week “will be decisive” to advance the peace process.

Russia signaled his intention to weaken Ukraine from all peace talks and carried out his biggest drone attack on the Ukraine of the war at the weekend.

The Ukrainian military intelligence agency Gur also warned on Sunday that Russia wanted to carry out a training start of an intercontinental rocket from RS-24 “Yars” on the night of May 19.

The agency said that the start should “intimidate Ukraine” and that the rocket would be equipped with a training sparhead. The rocket has a range of 10,000 km and would start from a location in the Sverdlovsk region in Russia near the Ural Mountains.

Additional reporting: Barbara Moens in Brussels and Laura Beitel in Berlin