Kremlin says Europe should be at Ukraine talks but its current approach makes dialogue "impossible"

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday 1 November that European representatives should take part in talks on settling the war in Ukraine, but that the European Union’s current stance towards Russia makes such participation pointless.

“This is a very complicated issue. On the one hand, they need to be at the negotiating table. But why would they be needed there right now with that kind of approach? It’s pointless. That’s why they aren’t there right now,” Peskov told Pavel Zarubin of Russian state television’s Vesti, according to TASS.

Peskov referred to the phone call that Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre held with President Vladimir Putin on 27 October. “Right now we see two leaders who decided to talk in their national capacity, and we see practically all the others and, above all, Brussels, who still talk only about inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia,” he said, according to Vesti and RIA Novosti. “With that approach it is impossible to talk to them.”

The Kremlin said at the time that the call was held at the initiative of Helsinki and Oslo, and that the leaders discussed the conflict in Ukraine and security in the Baltic Sea and northern Europe, RIA Novosti reported.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said at the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Atlanta on 31 October that Russia had shown no willingness to negotiate peace, Ukrainska Pravda reported.

Earlier: Finland’s Stubb and Norway’s Støre hold 90-minute call with Putin on ending the war; Kremlin says EU and NATO policies prolong fighting.