By Tom Balmforth and Bart H. Meijer
KYIV/BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Ukraine and its European allies demanded on Thursday that they be included in any peace negotiations, after U.S. President Donald Trump spoke by phone with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and said Kyiv would neither get all its land back nor join NATO.
Russia’s financial markets soared and the price of Ukraine’s debt rose at the prospect of the first talks in years to end Europe’s deadliest war since World War Two.
But Trump’s unilateral overture to Putin, accompanied by apparent concessions on Ukraine’s principal demands, raised alarm for both Kyiv and the European allies in NATO who said they feared the White House might make a deal without them.
“We, as a sovereign country, simply will not be able to accept any agreements without us,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. He said Putin aimed to make his negotiations bilateral with the United States, and it was important that this not be allowed.
The Kremlin said plans were under way for Putin and Trump to meet, possibly in Saudi Arabia. Ukraine would “of course” participate in peace talks in some way, but there would also be a bilateral negotiation track between the United States and Russia, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
European officials took an exceptionally firm line in public towards Trump’s peace overture, saying any agreement would be impossible to implement unless they and the Ukrainians were included in negotiating it.
“Any quick fix is a dirty deal,” European foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said. She also denounced the apparent concessions offered in advance.
“Why are we giving them (Russia) everything that they want even before the negotiations have been started?” said Kallas. “It’s appeasement. It has never worked.”
A European diplomatic source said ministers had agreed to engage in a “frank and demanding dialogue” with U.S. officials – some of the strongest language in the diplomatic lexicon – at the annual Munich Security Conference beginning on Friday.
‘BEST NEGOTIATOR ON THE PLANET’
On Wednesday Trump made the first publicly acknowledged White House call with Putin since Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion, and then followed it up with a call to Zelenskiy. Trump said he believed both men wanted peace.
But the Trump administration also said openly for the first time that it was unrealistic for Ukraine to expect to return to its 2014 borders or join the NATO alliance as part of any agreement, and that no U.S. troops would join any security force in Ukraine that might be set up to guarantee a ceasefire.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who unveiled the new policy in remarks at NATO headquarters, said on Thursday the world was fortunate to have Trump, the “best negotiator on the planet, bringing two sides together to find a negotiated peace”.
Kremlin spokesman Peskov said Moscow was “impressed” by Trump’s willingness to seek a settlement.
Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula and its proxies captured territory in the east in 2014, before its full-scale invasion in 2022 when it captured more land in the east and south.
Ukraine pushed Russian invaders back from the outskirts of Kyiv and recaptured swathes of territory in 2022, but its outmanned and outgunned forces have slowly ceded more land since a failed Ukrainian counter-offensive in 2023.
Relentless fighting has killed or injured hundreds of thousands of troops on both sides – there is no reliable death toll – and pulverised Ukrainian cities.
Meanwhile, there has been no narrowing of positions on either side. Moscow demands Kyiv cede more land and be rendered permanently neutral in any peace deal; Kyiv says Russian troops must withdraw and it must win security guarantees comparable to NATO membership to prevent future attacks.
Ukrainian officials have acknowledged in the past that full NATO membership may be out of reach in the short term, and that a hypothetical peace deal could leave some occupied land in Russian hands.
But Kyiv and its European allies made clear they were alarmed by what they viewed as the Trump administration conceding both those positions before talks began.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Kyiv remained committed to joining NATO, which he said was the simplest and least expensive way the West could provide the security guarantees needed to ensure peace.
“All our allies have said the path of Ukraine towards NATO is irreversible. This prospect is in our constitution. It is in our strategic interest.”
NATO’s Secretary-General Mark Rutte, a former Dutch Prime Minister adept at smoothing over differences between Europe and Washington, said it was important that Moscow understand the West remained united, noting that Ukraine had never been promised that a peace deal would include alliance membership.
Some Ukrainians saw Trump’s moves as a betrayal. Myroslava Lesko, 23, standing near a sea of flags in downtown Kyiv honouring fallen troops, said: “It truly looks as if they want to surrender Ukraine, because I don’t see any benefits for our country from these negotiations or Trump’s rhetoric.”
However, Ukrainians have been worn out by three years of war, and many say they are prepared to sacrifice some aims to achieve peace.
Many were frustrated by U.S. policy under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden, who vowed to help Ukraine win all its land back and provided tens of billions of dollars worth of military hardware, but only after delays that Ukrainian commanders say let Russian forces regroup.
Trump, at least, was being forthright about the limits of U.S. support, said Tymofiy Mylovanov, president of the Kyiv School of Economics.
“The difference between Biden and Trump is that Trump says out loud what Biden was thinking and doing about Ukraine,” he said on X.
(Additional reporting by Yurii Kovalenko and Dan Peleschuk; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Jon Boyle, Gareth Jones, William Maclean)
