Kuleba: Current Talks Differ From Earlier Rounds, but Putin Does Not Want a Deal

Dmytro Kuleba, who served as Ukraine's foreign minister for more than four years, assessed the new round of efforts to end the war in an interview with the Ukrainian outlet Ukrainska Pravda. Ukraine is preparing for a possible meeting with US and Russian representatives, and two European leaders, Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, have tried to join the process. The Russian side has refused to consider European involvement.

Europe's role

Kuleba believes US President Donald Trump is building a new configuration in which Europe is represented not by Germany, France and the United Kingdom, but by Finland and Norway. A warm-up round took place in Oslo, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff. In Kuleba's view, Norway matters more to Ukraine than Finland: it is one of the largest donors, takes part in the F-16 fighter jet programme and provides macro-financial support.

He sees no evidence that Europeans have joined the Americans in pressuring Ukraine. However, he says any such pressure would show up in funding: EU leaders are asking the European Commission for significant budget cuts, and elections are due in France next year.

Pressure from the US

Zelenskyy has reported for two days in a row that US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is not signing off on the transfer of Patriot and NASAMS air defence systems that Ukraine has already purchased. Kuleba reads this as an attempt to push Ukraine toward concessions. Still, he names the end of February 2025, after the Oval Office meeting, as the hardest moment, when intelligence sharing was halted. Since then, he says, Ukraine has adapted.

Putin's aims

Kuleba does not believe Putin genuinely seeks an agreement. In his view, the talks let Russia find out what it can gain at the table, placate Trump and set the Americans against Ukraine. He also recalls a November 2021 memorandum from the Russian Foreign Ministry asking the US to roll NATO's borders back to their 1997 positions, and argues that Putin cannot be bought off.