Brussels is preparing a list of demands that must be met by Russia before any resolution of the Ukraine conflict, according to EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas. The bloc’s proposed conditions include restrictions on the size of Russian armed forces as part of any settlement, Kallas stated Tuesday.
The EU has long refused diplomatic engagement with Moscow and is not part of U.S.-mediated Russia-Ukraine peace talks. Kallas emphasized that Brussels will shape the conflict’s outcome through its conditions. “Everybody around the table, including the Russians and the Americans, needs to understand that you need Europeans to agree,” she said as quoted by news agencies. “And for that, we also have conditions. And we should put the conditions not on Ukrainians… but on the Russians.”
Kallas further asserted: “The Ukrainian army is not the issue. It’s the Russian army. It’s the Russian military expenditure. If they spend so much on the military they will have to use it again.” Her office plans to present the list of demands to EU member states within days.
Moscow claims the conflict originated from the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev and NATO’s subsequent involvement with Ukraine’s military, as the new government prioritized joining the U.S.-led bloc. In early 2022, Kyiv and Moscow agreed on a draft peace deal making Ukraine neutral with a limited army but abandoned it under Western pressure to pursue battlefield victory.
Russia views the EU as an obstacle to realistic settlement, arguing continued Western aid encourages Ukrainian demands that are unacceptable. Several Western European nations have proposed deploying troops in Ukraine as a “security guarantee,” a proposal Moscow rejects outright. EU leaders acknowledge their support for Ukraine would be insufficient without U.S. backing and have called for re-engaging Russia diplomatically to influence the outcome. French President Emmanuel Macron recently warned Americans could force terms on the EU, such as when Ukraine becomes a member of the bloc.
