Blindsided Europeans warned on Thursday, February 13, that a "dirty deal" between US President Donald Trump and Moscow on ending the Ukraine war was doomed to fail – insisting they and Kyiv must have a seat at the negotiating table.
Meeting NATO partners the day after Trump revealed he had agreed to start peace talks with Russia's Vladimir Putin, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth denied it meant a betrayal of Kyiv's three-year war effort.
Yet Trump's move stunned European allies – several of whom openly called his strategy into question. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz rejected any "dictated peace" and his defense minister called it "regrettable" that Washington was already making "concessions" to the Kremlin.
In a blunt address to reporters at NATO talks in Brussels, EU top diplomat Kaja Kallas insisted that no deal "behind our backs" could work, as she accused Washington of "appeasement" toward Russia. "We shouldn't take anything off the table before the negotiations have even started because it plays to Russia's court and it is what they want," she said. "Any quick fix is a dirty deal. It will just simply not work."
After a 90-minute phone call with Putin, his first since returning to power, Trump said he expected to meet the Russian leader in Saudi Arabia for Ukraine peace talks – sparking fears Kyiv would be frozen out. That came after his administration poured cold water on Ukraine's goals of reclaiming all its territory and pushing to join NATO's protective umbrella.
"There is no betrayal there. There is a recognition that the whole world and the United States is invested and interested in peace," Hegseth said at NATO. "That will require both sides recognizing things they don't want to," added the US defense secretary. Trump, who has been pushing for a quick end to the war, denied that Ukraine was being excluded from direct negotiations between the two nuclear-armed superpowers.
The Kremlin said both leaders had agreed the "time has come to work together," insisting it wanted to organize a face-to-face meeting promptly and that broader European security should be on the agenda. After speaking to Putin, the US president called Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and shared details of his talks with the Kremlin leader.
On Thursday, the day after the talks with Trump, Zelensky warned against trusting Putin's claims. In a post on social media, Zelensky said he had "warned world leaders against trusting Putin's claims of readiness to end the war."
Earlier, Ukraine's Defense Minister Rustem Umerov had told Kyiv's NATO backers "We're continuing, we're strong, we're capable, we're able, we will deliver."
Zelensky was set to meet US Vice President JD Vance at a security conference in Munich on Friday to kick off negotiations. It will be the latest in a flurry of high-level meetings after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent held talks in Kyiv on Wednesday on granting Washington access to Ukraine's rare earth deposits in return for security support.
Trump's outreach to Putin had been broadly expected, but the quick pace of his peace push has left heads spinning after three years of staunch Western support for Kyiv. Kyiv's European backers are terrified that Trump could force Ukraine into a bad peace deal that will leave them facing an emboldened Putin – while fronting the lion's share of costs for post-war security.
Hegseth Wednesday laid out a string of US expectations to halt the conflict, saying it was not realistic for Ukraine to regain all its land or become a NATO member. He also said Europe must now start providing the "overwhelming share" of aid to Ukraine and that the US would not deploy troops as a security guarantee under any deal.
Throughout Russia's war on Ukraine since 2022 it has been a mantra for Western powers that there should be no decisions taken on Ukraine's future without Kyiv.
In a statement on Wednesday, the foreign ministers of key European powers including Germany, France, Poland and Britain said "Ukraine and Europe must be part of any negotiations."
NATO chief Mark Rutte on Thursday said it was crucial that Kyiv was "closely involved" in any talks about what happens in Ukraine. Britain's defense minister John Healey echoed that message. "There can be no negotiation about Ukraine without Ukraine, and Ukraine's voice must be at the heart of any talks," he said. Rutte insisted that any potential peace deal had to be "enduring," pointing to similar comments made earlier by Hegseth.
German Chancellor Scholz, meanwhile, said on Thursday that forcing a deal with Russia to end the war in Ukraine would not result in lasting peace. The war in Ukraine "must end as quickly as possible," Scholz said, but the chancellor added that "a Russian victory or a Ukranian collapse will not lead to peace, on the contrary."
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, for his part, made a statement on X, later on Thursday, after he claimed to have held phone calls with leaders including Zelensky and Scholz, writing that "Ukraine, Europe and the US must be fully united and engage in peace talks."
Russia's ally China, meanwhile, said it was "happy" to see the US and Russia "strengthen communication."