By John Irish
PARIS, Nov 9 (Reuters) – The EU’s foreign policy chief said on Monday she saw little sign of Russian goodwill to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, adding Moscow had already signed up to numerous agreements underpinning European security but had failed to respect them.
Kaja Kallas was speaking on the sidelines of a G7 ministerial meeting ahead of trilateral discussions on Tuesday in Abu Dhabi between Ukraine, Russia and the United States. Officials from France, Britain, Germany, NATO and the European Commission will also be in the Emirati capital.
“So far they have just been pretending that they negotiate because we haven’t seen any goodwill from the Russian side,” Kallas told Reuters in an interview in Paris.
“They are bombing Kyiv, they are bombing civilians. Ukrainians are making advances on the battlefield, so the Russian focus has been only on civilians to cause as much suffering before the hard winter is coming.”
Russia denies targeting civilians but has stepped up its aerial attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure and other key targets in recent months, as its forces’ advances in eastern Ukraine have stalled.
Ukraine has responded with drone attacks on Russian energy installations, often deep inside Russian territory.
Moscow has long accused the Europeans of refusing to take Russia’s own security concerns into consideration in Europe, for example by pursuing NATO enlargement up to its borders.
RUSSIA MUST RESPECT EXISTING AGREEMENTS, KALLAS SAYS
Jared Kushner, one of the lead US negotiators, said last week that the US was working on a “broader European security architecture”, something that has worried some Europeans, who have repeatedly said they would not accept anything they had not agreed to.
“The problem is that we already have a European security architecture in place that Russia has agreed to,” Kallas said, citing examples including the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, when Russia and others pledged to respect the independence, sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine.
“All this talk has to be about how we make sure that Russia actually respects the obligations that it has taken,” she added.
EUROPEAN FRICTION
In a sign of friction among Europeans, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni warned on November 5 that Europe risked becoming irrelevant in efforts to end the war in Ukraine if member states continued pursuing separate diplomatic tracks, rather than agreeing on a common representative and strategy.
Kallas said future discussions on European security should be led by the European Union in line with its treaties and institutional structures, rather than through ad hoc formats.
“It is clear that the big countries want to talk also to big countries,” she said. “But when it comes to European security issues, then the European Union has very clear lines in place. We have the treaties,” she also said.
With the EU currently negotiating a 22nd package of sanctions on Russia, Kallas said she hoped that losses suffered by US President Donald Trump’s Republicans in last week’s midterm elections would alter Washington’s approach to Ukraine.
“We are hoping that there will be pressure on Russia to end this war and pressure (with) the (US) sanctions,” she said. “If we were to do this together with the Americans, it would really have an effect.”
(Reporting by John Irish;Editing by Gareth Jones)
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