Meanwhile, Russian missiles and drones continue to rain down on Ukrainian cities, killing civilians and pummeling infrastructure.
“We are forgetting that Russia has not made one single concession, and they are the ones who are the aggressor here,” Kallas said, adding that focusing the negotiations on Ukraine giving up territory was a “trap that Putin wants us to walk into.”
On security guarantees for Ukraine, Trump said Monday he was ready to offer a “lot of help,” raising hopes that the U.S. could participate meaningfully in an international peacekeeping force. But he backtracked Tuesday, suggesting instead that he was open to providing air support for European troops deployed there.
“We’ve got the European nations, and they’ll front-load it,” Trump said on Fox News, adding: “France and Germany, a couple of them, U.K. They want to have, you know, boots on the ground.”
Kallas said Ukraine’s allies in the so-called coalition of the willing had yet to take “concrete steps” and it was up to them to figure out what they could contribute to a future deterrence force in Ukraine and what shape it would take.
“Russia will just gather its forces again and attack again,” she said, “so we have to make sure that they don’t do that in the future.”
