By Michel Rose
BRUSSELS, Dec 19 (Reuters) – Europe will have to re-engage in direct talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin if the latest U.S.-led efforts to broker a Ukraine peace deal founder, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday.
European leaders wary of Putin’s future military ambitions have smarted at their exclusion from peace talks led by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, compelled instead to shore up Ukraine’s negotiating positions from the sidelines.
“Either a robust and lasting peace is reached, with the required (security) guarantees,” Macron told reporters in Brussels, “or we will need in the weeks ahead to find ways for Europeans to re-engage in a fulsome dialogue with Russia, and in complete transparency.”
The office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Macron was speaking after EU leaders agreed to fund Ukraine with a 90 billion euro ($105.44 billion) loan backed by the bloc’s own budget rather than frozen Russian assets, with divisions between member states proving too tricky to overcome.
The French president said the EU could not deprive itself of a direct line to Moscow if Trump’s administration had one. U.S. officials are due to hold talks with Russian negotiators in Miami this weekend.
Most EU countries, with the exception of Hungary and Slovakia, have severed communication with Putin since he invaded Ukraine. Macron held a two-hour phone call with Putin in July, the first in three years, in which he called for a ceasefire in Ukraine, but the conversation had little discernible impact on the war.
The bloc had an interest in finding the right framework to re-engage in talks with Russia, Macron said, or else its leaders risked being left talking amongst themselves and “with negotiators who alone will talk to the Russians.”
WARNINGS OF CREEPING WAR FATIGUE
Some EU leaders warn it is increasingly tough to maintain hitherto high levels of public support for sustaining Ukraine’s war effort.
EU leaders in Brussels had been determined to avert the risk of Kyiv going bankrupt next year because it sees Russia’s war in Ukraine as a threat to its own security. But most had hoped to use immobilised Russian assets to do so, and not their own cash.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the summit deal showed Europe could deliver when needed but that some EU governments were under mounting political pressure at home.
“This is what Putin is hoping for, the combination of some kind of war fatigue with a hybrid war that brings a lot of uncertainty and insecurity into our societies,” Frederiksen told reporters after the summit.
($1 = 0.8535 euros)
(Reporitng by Michel Rose; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
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