European bid to pressure Trump hangs in balance after call for peace talks

Donald Trump's social media post insisting Ukraine must immediately start peace talks with Russia has set back, and possibly jeopardised, Europe's carefully laid plans to persuade the US to impose sanctions on Moscow for refusing the US president's proposal for a 30-day ceasefire, European diplomats have said.

- Patrick Wintour

Volodymyr Zelenskyy had no choice but to accept Vladimir Putin's invitation to talks in Istanbul on Thursday for fear of offending Trump, diplomats said. Putin made the offer in a bid not to alienate the US president, and avoid the growing European pressure on Trump to impose harsher sanctions. Western diplomats say they have no reason to believe that Trump acted in collusion with the Russian leader.

The leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Poland had for the first time gone together to Kyiv at the weekend to underline the call for a 30-day ceasefire that they said should have started yesterday.

The aim of the visit by Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz and Donald Tusk was to put pressure on Trump to admit that Putin was stalling, and that the US had no political option but to put swingeing economic sanctions on Russia.

Foreign ministers had also been in Lviv on Friday in an effort to put pressure on Russia, including by saying plans existed to try Russian leaders for the crime of aggression in front of a special tribunal.

The UK had announced further sanctions on the Russian shadow fleet. Partly due to Trump's intervention, the UK postponed further measures due to have been announced yesterday, but the EU is continuing with its plans for another package of sanctions later this month. A German government spokesman said yesterday the EU would begin working on the sanctions if there was not a ceasefire by the end of the day.