The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, has warned Western leaders that pressure on Ukraine to hand over parts of its territory to Russia is a trap Putin is luring them into.
Kallas told the BBC that allowing Russia to keep Ukrainian territory as part of a peace plan was the trap Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted them to fall into.
It was her first interview with British media since European leaders joined US President Donald Trump’s peace talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House.
Ukraine has consistently rejected the possibility of handing over Donbas to the Kremlin in exchange for peace, although US President Donald Trump has stressed the need for a “territorial swap”.
Kallas also spoke at length about “credible and strong” security guarantees for Ukraine, the BBC reports.
She admitted that there were few concrete steps for a deterrent force at this stage of the talks.
“The strongest security guarantee is a strong Ukrainian military,” she said, stressing the importance of establishing guarantees that are not just on paper.
She said it was up to the member states of the “coalition of the willing” to determine exactly how they could contribute and that it was not yet clear under what mandate their forces would operate.
Leaders of key EU countries including France, Germany, Italy and Finland joined Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for talks at the White House last week, days after President Trump hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin at a military base in Alaska.
