Searching for peace

The Russia-Ukraine war can end only when the warring parties decide to silence their guns

- 

HEAD OF THE third anniversary of the war between Russia and Ukraine, US President Donald Trump blindsided Europe, if not Ukraine, by talking directly to Russia's President Vladimir Putin to "immediately" end this conflict. Washington and Moscow have already had talks in Riyadh — attended by US secretary of state Marco Rubio, national security advisor Mike Waltz, and special envoy Steve Witkoff, and Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov — without Europe and Ukraine at the table. European leaders had a foretaste of what was in the offing at the Munich Security Conference when top US officials stated that America no longer saw European security as its main priority and dismissed Ukraine's demands for a return of all seized territories and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership as "unrealistic"; and that Ukraine's security guarantees would henceforth be provided by the Europeans and not the US. To forge a response to Trump's peace initiative, European leaders held an emergency meeting