June 25, 2021: European Union leaders failed to agree on a proposal by France and Germany to hold a summit soon with Russian President Vladimir Putin after Poland and Baltic countries said it would send the wrong message as East-West ties deteriorate.
After U.S. President Joe Biden met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva on June 16, French President Emmanuel Macron said the first EU summit with Putin since January 2014 would be “a dialogue to defend our interests”. He insisted the EU could not only be reactive in its diplomacy with Russia.
But after late night talks at their meeting in Brussels, the 27 EU leaders failed to reach an agreement, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said early on Friday.
“It was a very comprehensive conversation, and not easy,” she told reporters. “There is no agreement today on the immediate leaders’ meeting,” she said. The EU meetings with Russia ended in March 2014 after Moscow annexed the Ukraines Crimean peninsula and the West imposed sanctions. While Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said he supported the Franco-German proposal, many other leaders opposed it. “Don’t change your position on Russia,” said Lithuanian President Gaitanas Nauseda after the meeting.
Earlier, he had said that the idea was like “trying to tie a bear to keep the honey pot safe”. Latvian Prime Minister Krzysjanis Karinz said the European Union was threatening to win a summit with Russia, although diplomacy had failed to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine with Russian-backed separatists. Instead, EU leaders returned to Moscow to warn of further sanctions. If this continues, the EU says Russian language incompetence, cyber and covert attacks and blocking Has interfered with trying. Russia denies any wrongdoing.
In a summit statement, the leaders called on the European Commission and the EU’s top diplomat, Joseph Borrell, to offer “additional sanctions, including economic sanctions” against Russia. The European Union (EU) has imposed individual sanctions on Russia over its use of energy, finance and weapons, as well as human rights abuses and the use of banned chemical weapons. Diplomatic staff say further sanctions could target powerful money launderers suspected of Russian money laundering or serious corruption abroad, as Britain, a non-EU member, first did in April.
Macron sought a less-than-hostile relationship with Putin in September 2019, without success, and outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel met with Putin in Moscow in January 2020. Putin spoke by phone with EU summit president Charles Michel in June. This year 7. France and Germany want to be able to find ways to combat climate change and strengthen ties with Russia.
“Formats will be explored … under which dialogue can be initiated,” Merkel said without a summit. Many EU countries are concerned that the Kremlin is not taking the bloc seriously after it was publicly humiliated by the Kremlin in February. Russia expelled EU diplomats during Borrell’s visit to Moscow without warning. “We have to be very careful, it’s not like Russia’s relationship with the United States,” said Noida, Lithuania.
While France is a nuclear power, the European Union relies on NATO for its territorial defense and makes decisions between 27 states, making it easier for the Kremlin to exploit differences. Earlier, the Kremlin welcomed the idea of a summit, saying both Brussels and Moscow needed talks, although Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he wanted more details.
On opposing sides in standoffs in Ukraine and Belarus, and at odds over human rights, the EU and Russia accuse each other of threatening security and stability from the Baltics to the Black Sea.
The EU on Thursday imposed economic sanctions on Belarus, an ally of Russia that the Kremlin sees as a buffer state between Russia and NATO.
Reporting from Brussels shortly before the start of the summit, FRANCE 24’s Dave Keating said there was a “very mixed reaction” within the bloc to the proposal. “A lot of EU leaders are very angry about this proposal,” he explained. “Several feel that it’s pretentious for the leaders of France and Germany to think that they could meet with Putin and speak for all of the EU … a lot of countries think that this meeting shouldn’t be happening at all, particularly the Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania – and Poland.”
He said that several European leaders expressed skepticism about the move. He added, “If Merkel and Macron want to meet with Putin, they will not mind, but the the Dutch PM Mark Rutte will never meet with Putin, because of one word: MH17” – the plane that was carrying Dutch passengers, which was shot down by Russian separatists over eastern Ukraine in 2014.
Merkel Macron stresses that the EU must remain stable and united on Moscow, but must engage with the Kremlin on issues of mutual interest, such as climate change, health, the Iran nuclear deal and the conflicts in Syria and Libya.
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