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Europeans need to have their own peace plan for Ukraine and stop waiting on the Americans to take all the initiative, European Commissioner for Defence Andrius Kubilius told Euronews’ Europe Today programme on Tuesday.
“We need perhaps to overcome some kind of our mental problems that usually we’re awaiting when some plans will come from Washington,” Kubilius said.
“It would be very good for us to have our own plan and then you know to compare with (the) American plan to see what is good, what we want to discuss,” he added.
“I think that we’re moving into that direction. Since really this approach that we need to be more independent both in our defence capabilities but also in our geopolitical standing is coming,” he added.
US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner are due to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Tuesday afternoon to continue talks on ending the war in Ukraine.
It comes after a new peace plan proposal hammered out between Washington and Moscow leaked last week, spooking Ukrainians and Europeans alike as it skewed heavily in Russia’s favour.
The plan would have seen Ukraine cede the entire region of the Donbas to Russia, force Kyiv to limit the size of its military, and have it give up on its aspiration to join the NATO alliance.
It set off a new flurry of diplomatic contacts across Europe including another meeting of the so-called “Coalition of the Willing,” with Europeans putting forward counter-proposals that led Washington and Kyiv to create an “updated and refined peace framework” at a meeting in Geneva over the weekend.
This will be the basis for the talks between the US and Russia on Tuesday.
But the debacle once more highlighted Europe’s difficulty in getting a seat at the table despite being the largest donor of military and financial support to the war-torn country, and agreeing to take on most of the security guarantees Ukraine will need should a peace be struck.
French President Emmanuel Macron underlined on Monday afternoon after meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy that no agreement will move forward without European participation, insisting that the process can only advance with Europeans “around the table”.
Macron added that no decisions have been finalised yet and that Europeans will continue to discuss security guarantees in the coming days.
EU needs own Ukraine peace plan, defence chief says
Kubilius told Euronews that “it’s good” Trump “is taking the initiative” and “trying to bring peace”.
“The question is really if you know that peace, as this plan is proposing, will be (a) just and long-term peace. That is what we need to be concerned and we’re standing together with Ukraine and definitely Ukraine wants peace, you know, and all of us we want peace.”
“(A) bad deal would be bad not only for Ukraine, it would be bad also for the whole (of) Europe because definitely we need to understand and we need to take seriously what our intelligence services are saying, that during the next several years Russia can be ready to test Article 5,” he also said.
Like High Representative Kaja Kallas on Monday, Kubilius backed the creation of a reparations loan that would see Europeans make use of nearly €200 billion of the Russian Central Bank’s assets frozen in their jurisdiction to provide financial assistance to Ukraine for the next two years.
The proposal is however being blocked by Belgium, where the bulk of the assets are being held, which is calling for more risk and burden sharing over possible retaliation from Moscow.
Kubilius said however that the loan “would be also very important because such an amount of financial support maybe could convince Putin that he will not achieve anything”.
EU leaders are expected to make a final decision on whether to move forward with the plan when they meet on 18 December.
