Willing in pressing on the Kremlin. A ceased the “complete and unconditional” fire lasting 30 days, with the aim of creating a dialog box that can start a “right and lasting” peace negotiation. It is the proposal That the leaders of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Poland put on the table in Kiev, during a surprise visit to the Ukrainian capital. Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz, Keir Starmer and Donald Tusk showed up united to send a clear message: “Diplomacy must have its space, but Russia must stop”.
An appeal that the four European leaders also address to United Stateswith which a concertation is underway to make the initiative as binding as possible for Moscow. “Together with the United States we ask Russia to accept a complete and without condition a cease,” reads a joint declaration. “We are ready to support and facilitate peace talks, to face the technical implementation of the truce and to work for a global peace agreement”.
Macron, Merz and Starmer arrived in Ukraine with a train that started from Poland. Tusk has traveled separately, but he came to Kiev almost simultaneously. The journey, prepared in secret, was announced only late on Friday evening, for safety reasons. The first symbolic stage was Maidan Nezalezhnosti, the Dependence Square, the heart of the 2014 Pro-European revolts and theater of the Ukrainian Resistance. Then the meeting with the President Volodymyr Zelenskyto which the four reiterated full support, before participating in the meeting of the coalition of the “willing”, to which also the leaders of about thirty countries, including Giorgia Meloni, took part in videocollection.
As previously highlighted, also the Italian Premier Melons He took part in the meeting with a remote intervention. Palazzo Chigi has made it known that Meloni reiterated “the urgency of a cease total and unconditional fire”, urging Moscow to collect the appeal of the international community. “It is time to demonstrate – underlined the Prime Minister – that there is really the will to build peace”.
From the Kremlinhowever, the answer was not long in coming. Dmitrij Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, clarified that any negotiation will have to start from the immediate stop to the supply of weapons to Ukraine by the West. “A ceased the fire now would be just an advantage for Kiev – Peskov said to the American broadcaster ABC – at a time when our troops are advanced confidently on the front”. And he added: “Without a suspension of western military support, the truce would be used by Kiev to reorganize, train new units and mobilize resources. We cannot accept it”.
It is the first time since the beginning of the conflict that the leaders of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Poland go together in Ukraine. The presence of the willing would like to represent a strong political signal, more than three years after the Russian invasion. One day just after the celebratory parade of the Kremlin for the 80 years after the victory against Nazism, the journey of the “willing” to Kiev is a message to Putin: Europe is still alongside Ukraine, and does not intend to leave the negotiation table only to war logics.
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