US and Russian officials are meeting in Saudi Arabia today
to discuss ways to end the war in Ukraine without
any representatives from Kiev. The talks come after a
phone call last week between Presidents Trump and Putin.
French President Emmanuel Macron meanwhile hosted fellow European leaders in
Paris yesterday to discuss the EU's defense capacity as well
as the war. The leaders did find some common
ground. There was agreement and unanimity that a significant
increase in defense spending is absolutely necessary, and there
is no need to get irritated if an American ally
says spend more, be stronger and more resilient because
those words are definitely justified by facts. OK,
let's bring in Bloomberg's Greg Sullivan, who's been following
this for us with a focus of course on the
talks that take place in Saudi Arabia today. Greg
, what can we expect from the conversations between Russian
and US officials in Riyadh? Well, first of
all, this is a lot about establishing communication.
This is a major policy reversal from the Biden administration
which largely sought to isolate Russia and sued high level
contacts with them. There's very little communication between the
Biden administration and Russia, and suddenly now you have
face to face talks and potentially a leader summit.
Of course also we'll be looking for what comes of
any potential. summit, can they arrange a meeting
between Trump and Putin, which the US has said
they would like to do before the end of the
month? And finally, people will also be watching
closely what are the contours of any possible ceasefire agreement
that Russia and the USC is viable and would that
potentially work for Ukraine or others? So those are
the main things that we're watching with this meeting coming
today. And Greg, we've been hearing from the
German Chancellor Olaf Schultz making his views pretty clear in
terms of Ukraine's absence from these peace negotiations. Let's
take a listen. It is completely premature and completely
the wrong time to have this discussion now. I'm
even a little irritated by these debates. I have
to say this is highly inappropriate, to put it
bluntly and honestly. So some pretty direct comments there
, Greg, from the German Chancellor around these negotiations
taking place in Saudi Arabia. What else have we
been hearing from European leaders? Are you getting any
sense, Greg, is the Trump administration open to
listening to European concerns, to taking on board some
of these concerns? Well, I think you see
a real worry among European leaders that the Trump administration
just thinks they don't need them, that they can
talk directly to Russia or others, and that Europe
is not necessarily a player here. They're scrambling to
formulate the response and figure out a way to convince
the Trump administration that they need to be present in
any dialogues on European security and that they deserve a
place at the table. Now of course one particular
sticking point which we heard from Tusk earlier is defense
spending. Can Europe step up to the plate,
help provide security guarantees for Ukraine, help provide for
their own security? We know that Trump has been
long critical of NATO spending among other NATO members,
defense spending, so that's a real sticking point.
But nonetheless, we have the sense that Europe is
scrambling to formulate their response to a Trump administration they
see moving quite rapidly.