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Leaders of Europe including the UK, France and Germany said ‘the current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations’
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European leaders have issued a joint statement expressing support for President Donald Trump’s stance on ending the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Leaders of nations including the UK, Germany, France, Ukraine and the European Union backed calls for the fighting to “stop immediately”.
“We strongly support President Trump’s position that the fighting should stop immediately, and that the current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations,” a statement, published by several European governments including the UK on Tuesday, said.
Trump has been public about the fact he does not believe Ukraine can win its war with Russia and said it will need to make territorial concessions or “face destruction” in a reportedly heated meeting at the White House last week.
“They could still win it, I don’t think they will,” the US president said during a meeting with Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio held a phone call with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Monday, while an anticipated meeting this week between the two was postponed, according to CNN. It comes ahead of a critical Trump-Putin meeting, which does not yet have a date.
Poland has warned Russian President Vladimir Putin against travelling through its airspace for an impending summit in Hungary with US President Donald Trump.
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Putin in 2023, accusing him of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children.
“I cannot guarantee that an independent Polish court won’t order the government to escort such an aircraft down to hand the suspect to the court in The Hague,” Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told Radio Rodzina.
“I think the Russian side is aware of this. And, therefore, if this summit is to take place, hopefully with the participation of the victim of the aggression, the aircraft will use a different route.”
The ICC warrant obligates member states to arrest Putin if he sets foot in their territory.
Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was forced to avoid the airspace of several countries due to an ICC arrest warrant also issued against him for alleged war crimes.
Poland has a tense relationship with Russia, after the country engaged in drone incursions into its airspace last month, prompting its foreign minister to demand the imposition of a no-fly zone.
Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk has confirmed that Polish security services detained eight people suspected of preparing to carry out acts of sabotage in various regions on Tuesday.
“ABW (the internal security agency), in cooperation with other services, detained eight people in various parts of the country in recent days, suspected of preparing acts of sabotage,” the Polish leader wrote on X/Twitter.
“Further operational activities are continuing,” he added.
On X, the minister responsible for special services, Tomasz Siemoniak, said, “The matters … concern reconnaissance of military facilities and critical infrastructure elements, the preparation of means to carry out acts of sabotage, and the direct execution of attacks.”
Officials have reported being attacked with the use of arson and cyberattacks as part of a “hybrid war” waged by Russia to affect nations supporting Ukraine. Russia has denied the accusations.
A Russian attack on energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s northern region of Chernihiv has led to power cuts affecting “hundreds of thousands” of people.
“Emergency crews in Chernihiv region are unable to begin work on restoring power supply due to continuous attacks by Russian drones,” Ukraine’s energy ministry said in a statement on Telegram on Tuesday.
Donald Trump has told Ukraine it will have to cede vast swathes of its territory, including the entire Donbas region, which is almost 90 per cent occupied by Russia.
European leaders issuing a statement on Tuesday said that “the current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations”.
European leaders including those of Britain, France, Germany, Ukraine and the European Union have issued a joint statement in support of US President Donald Trump’s position on ending the fighting between Ukraine and Russia.
“We strongly support President Trump’s position that the fighting should stop immediately, and that the current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations,” the statement published by several European governments including the UK on Tuesday, said.
“We must ramp up the pressure on Russia’s economy and its defence industry, until Putin is ready to make peace. We are developing measures to use the full value of Russia’s immobilised sovereign assets so that Ukraine has the resources it needs.”
World security is at its most fragile since World War II, Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s SVR intelligence service said on Tuesday.
“The world is now experiencing the most fragile moment for international security since World War Two, namely a period of qualitative transformation of the global order,” Russia’s RIA cited him saying on Tuesday.
He said there is a “fierce struggle” between the world’s power centres with the aim to redefine the contours of the future political landscape.
“Our shared, and perhaps principal, task is to ensure that adaptation to the new reality proceeds without a major war, as has happened at previous historical stages.”
After a phone call on Monday to discuss Russia’s ongoing military action in Ukraine, an in-person meeting between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov has been delayed.
A White House official told CNN that the meeting had been put on hold for the time being, but a reason was not provided. A source told the publication that the stalling was because of divergent expectations about a possible end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The meeting was expected to be a forerunner to a highly anticipated summit between US President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin in Budapest.
A Russian foreign ministry spokesperson said: “You can’t postpone what was not agreed upon”, adding that the meeting required preparation. Moscow is said to be working on what Lavrov and Rubio discussed on Monday.
It has led to speculation that the Trump-Putin meeting may also be pushed back.
Field Marshal Lord Richards tells The Independent’s Sam Kiley that Ukraine has been given false hope by its Western allies and cannot triumph against Russia unless Nat forces join the fight.
European troops are “ready to deploy” to Ukraine in the coming weeks if Vladimir Putin agrees to a ceasefire, defence secretary John Healey said.
However, Ukrainians must be the “people who will decide how and what” is negotiated in any peace talks, he said.
He said: “Peace is possible, and if president Trump can broker a peace, then we will be ready to help secure that peace for the long term.
“That requires us to invest and prepare our forces to be ready to deploy.
“Keir Starmer has said, if necessary, he’s willing to see UK boots on the ground in Ukraine, and I’ve accelerated already millions of pounds in that preparation for any possible deployment in the event of peace.
“And I would expect the cost of that to be well over £100m.”
Russian troops have pushed into the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk – and immediately begun the casual commission of war crimes, with the murder of at least three civilians who were trying to flee the invaders.
In footage shared with The Independent, an elderly woman lies on the verge of a road by a level crossing not far from the railway tracks on the outskirts of the city. She is wounded, and still.
A few yards away, a body lies on its back – inert, dead. Nearby, another victim lies collapsed next to the bicycle they had loaded with supplies before desperately bumping the wheels over the rails as the enemy approached. Slow and awkward, he or she must have been an easy target for Vladimir Putin’s vanguard.
World affairs editor Sam Kiley from Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine:
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