European leaders expected to cement support for Ukraine

BERLIN: European leaders are expected to cement support for Ukraine on Monday as it faces Washington’s pressure to swiftly accept a US-brokered peace deal. Peace talks between US envoys and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as well as Ukrainian and European officials, continued Monday morning as part of a series of meetings in an effort to secure the continent’s peace and security in the face of an increasingly assertive Russia.

The second day of talks in Berlin began shortly before noon local time.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb, one of the key European interlocutors between US President Donald Trump and Zelenskyy, was spotted Monday morning in downtown Berlin. Zelenskyy sat down Sunday with Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in the German federal chancellery in the hopes of bringing the nearly four-year war to a close.

Washington has tried for months to navigate the demands of each side as Trump presses for a swift end to Russia’s war and grows increasingly exasperated by delays. The search

for possible compromises has run into major obstacles, including control of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, which is mostly occupied by Russian forces.

The US government late Sunday said in a social media post on Witkoff’s account after the five-hour meeting that “a lot of progress was made.”

Earlier in the day, Zelenskyy voiced readiness to drop his country’s bid to join NATO if the US and other Western nations give Kyiv security guarantees similar to those offered to NATO members. But Ukraine continued to reject the US push for ceding territory to Russia.agencies