The European Union has announced it is drafting a list of conditions that must be met by Russia before any resolution to the Ukraine conflict can be reached, according to its foreign policy chief.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas revealed Tuesday that the bloc intends to demand restrictions on the size of the Russian armed forces as part of any settlement. The EU has long refused diplomatic engagement with Moscow and is not participating in US-mediated Russia-Ukraine peace talks.
“Everybody around the table, including the Russians and the Americans, needs to understand that you need Europeans to agree,” Kallas stated in a press conference. “And for that, we also have conditions. And we should put the conditions not on Ukrainians… but on the Russians.”
She emphasized: “The Ukrainian army is not the issue. It’s the Russian army. It’s the Russian military expenditure. If they spend so much on the military they will have to use it again.” Kallas confirmed her office would present the list of demands to EU member states within days.
Moscow maintains that the conflict was triggered by the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev and NATO’s subsequent military involvement with Ukraine. In early 2022, Kyiv and Moscow agreed on a draft peace deal that would have made Ukraine neutral with a limited army, but Ukraine abandoned it under Western pressure to pursue battlefield victories.
Russia argues that continued EU support for Ukraine makes the conflict more difficult to resolve, claiming such aid encourages Kyiv to make unacceptable demands. Several Western European nations have offered to deploy troops in Ukraine as a security guarantee—a move Moscow has firmly rejected.
EU leaders acknowledge their support for Ukraine would be insufficient without US backing. Some EU officials have called for re-engaging Russia diplomatically to influence the conflict’s outcome. French President Emmanuel Macron recently warned that Americans could force terms on the EU, such as when Ukraine should join the bloc.
