“I’m grateful to the Americans and to President Trump, as weird as this may sound, that they keep trying. Because we Europeans have so utterly failed at doing that. It should’ve been us,” said Benedikt Franke, vice chairman and CEO of the Munich Security Conference.
“At the end of the day, this is the closest we have come to negotiations and it’s due to the current administration, we have to acknowledge that even if we don’t like the style and even if we don’t like some of the content.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha joined the conference in India, where he touted progress that Kyiv made with the U.S. side during recent talks in Saudi Arabia. There, the Ukrainians agreed to an immediate 30-day ceasefire to start negotiations if the Russians complied.
“We’d really expect from the Russian side an unconditional ‘yes’ for the ceasefire,” Sybiha said, when asked about what he hoped would come from the Trump-Putin call.
Russian officials attending the conference, speaking before the results of the call were known, accurately predicted that Putin would likely push for more concessions before agreeing to any short-term ceasefire. Putin “doesn’t want a ceasefire in itself because what we need is lasting peace and security guarantees for Russia,” said Vyacheslav Nikonov, a member of the Russian state Duma, who avoided acknowledging that Russia started the war with its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
He added it was unlikely Putin would agree to allow Ukraine to continue to be armed by the U.S. during any 30-day ceasefire.