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The French, German and British ambassadors to Russia held talks in the foreign ministry in Moscow on Thursday, several days after a London summit with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The UK hosted Zelenskyy and the leaders of France and Germany earlier this week, supporting Kyiv’s call for direct talks with Russia to end more than four years of war.
The envoys met with Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Galuzin.
“We just had a good discussion and we will release a statement later today,” France’s envoy Nicolas de Riviere told reporters outside the ministry.
But that assessment was contradicted by the foreign ministry’s press director Maria Zakharova who accused the ambassadors of promoting a “dead-end Zelenskyy formula.”
“The leaders of these countries are pretending, through their statements, to be calling for peace, but in reality they are putting forward unacceptable conditions, increasing the production of long-range weapons for Kyiv and generally taking steps towards the militarisation of Ukraine and Europe,” she said.
Moscow, however, said the ambassadors had been told of their countries’ “destructive” policy on Ukraine, accusing them of wanting to “continue the war against Russia on behalf of and at the expense of” European countries.
Russian President Vladimir Putin this month rejected Zelenskyy’s offer for a face-to-face meeting to end the fighting.
In London, the UK’s Keir Starmer, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Friedrich Merz said they supported Zelenskyy’s proposal and that the current frontline should be a “starting point for negotiations.”
European ambassadors have rarely held talks with the Russian authorities during Moscow’s four-year war against Ukraine and have been frequently summoned by the foreign ministry.
Several Western European countries, including France, have floated the idea of restarting a dialogue with Moscow to end the Ukraine war, Europe’s worst since WWII.
US-led talks on ending the war have led nowhere and have been sidelined by the Iran war.
Russia has preferred to talk to US President Donald Trump’s administration on the conflict, with the Kremlin not wanting European countries involved in talks on ending the war.
The UK, France and Germany have been some of Kyiv’s staunchest allies during Moscow’s full-scale invasion.
Additional sources • AFP
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