Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed a shift in Washington's approach to ending the war with Russia this week, saying the decision to draw European leaders directly into the peace process would give the European Union a "voice" in negotiations over its own continent's security.
The comment followed a day of shuttle diplomacy Thursday by White House envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, who met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow before flying to Dublin that evening to see Zelensky, part of a gathering of roughly 50 world leaders in the Irish capital. Putin told the envoys Russia's position on the war, and its demand for Ukrainian territory, had not changed.
A swap, but no breakthrough
The Dublin meeting followed talks in Abu Dhabi last week that, as Al Jazeera reported, failed to produce a breakthrough on the central dispute over territory. Thursday did bring one concrete result: Russia and Ukraine agreed to their largest prisoner exchange since the full-scale invasion began in 2022. Kushner said the swap would return "thousands of people to their families," though he did not give an exact number or a timeline. He added that Washington had been "working very, very closely over the past several months with Europeans," and that he had pressed Putin on the importance of including European delegates "at the table" — telling reporters afterward, "he's willing to give it a try."
Zelensky has argued for years that Europe belongs in the talks, partly because of Ukraine's ambition to eventually join the EU. European Commission Vice President Kaja Kallas, the bloc's top diplomat, told the BBC's Newshour that Russia's acceptance of a European presence showed the Kremlin "now realised that Europe is a big player," though she voiced doubt that Moscow had real momentum toward a deal. Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin told the Dublin gathering that the continent's security had been "fundamentally reshaped" by the war, adding that "many member states [of the EU] feel an existential threat because of what has happened in Ukraine and the potential, if Ukraine was to fall, for further aggression on the European continent."
Roughly a fifth of Ukrainian territory remains under Russian control, and cross-border strikes have grown more frequent. Hours before the Dublin meeting, Zelensky said Ukrainian forces faced new, more "systematic" restrictions on Starshield, the military-grade satellite service that Elon Musk's SpaceX operates alongside its consumer Starlink network, limiting Kyiv's ability to track Russian jet-powered drones — a sign of the strained, often improvised nature of Ukraine's reliance on American technology even as diplomats talk peace.
No date has been set for a direct Zelensky-Putin meeting, and Europe still has not agreed on who would represent it at the table.