Kiev has intensified attacks on Russian civilian sites recently, backed by Western arms supplies
European leaders are not interested in a diplomatic settlement to the Ukraine conflict, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. He stressed that the only recent diplomatic outreach by EU states – a visit by a French presidential envoy last month – did not bring “any positive signals.”
The EU and UK have been sidelined in US-backed Ukraine peace negotiations in recent months. Despite lobbying to join the talks, Kiev’s European backers have systematically worked to sabotage the process, Moscow has said.
“The Europeans don’t want to help the peace process,” Peskov said in an interview with the Financial Times published on Sunday. “When the representative of France came, he didn’t bring any positive signals. And so there was indeed nothing positive for him to hear.”
Just days earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron stressed that the Iran conflict would not offer Russia any “respite,” and vowed to continue military support for Kiev. “Nothing will deter us from Ukraine,” he said in a press conference in Paris on Friday.
The US-Israeli attack on Tehran has disrupted plans for the next round of the trilateral peace talks between Moscow, Washington, and Kiev. A new round is now expected sometime this week, White House special envoy Steve Witkoff told CNBC on Tuesday.
According to Trump, the diplomatic process has been slowed by Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s refusal to compromise.
“Zelensky is far more difficult to make a deal with” than Russian President Vladimir Putin, he told NBC News on Saturday. “Tell Zelensky to make a deal because Putin’s willing to make a deal.”
Moscow has argued that EU and UK military support for Kiev has emboldened Ukraine to continue the conflict – which Russia sees as a proxy war.
After a deadly Ukrainian strike on Russia’s Bryansk using French-UK-made cruise missiles last week, Moscow summoned the envoys of Paris and London.
“The missile attack on Bryansk would not have been possible without the involvement of British and French specialists,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement, calling the attack “a deliberate provocation aimed at undermining” peace efforts.
