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Ukraine’s former Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has slammed Europe’s pace of decision-making on the war in Ukraine, saying European allies are failing to offer “answers to the most vital questions.”
“Isn’t it embarrassing that almost four years into the war, European leaders are still jumping from one topic to another, from sending peacekeeping forces to reassurance forces to strengthening the Ukrainian army,” Kuleba said on Euronews’ interview show 12 Minutes With.
“With this pace of decision-making and conceptual understanding of where Europe is heading, there are no good times for Europe ahead,” he added.
His comments came as diplomatic efforts to agree on a peace deal, spearheaded by the US, gathered pace. Earlier this week, a peace framework drafted by US and Russian envoys was presented to Ukraine by the Trump administration, prompting a diplomatic scramble to re-write the terms of the deal.
Although two top EU aides joined negotiations with Ukrainian and American delegations in Geneva earlier this week, European leaders have been largely side-lined from the talks.
On Tuesday, France and the UK reaffirmed their commitment to providing “rock-solid” security guarantees to Ukraine as part of the ‘Coalition of the Willing, a group of Ukraine’s allies, and announced a new joint task-force to shape those guarantees with the participation of the US.
But the coalition, which includes 33 members, has not yet made concrete commitments in terms of the number of troops they would be willing to deploy.
“I appreciate every effort that is being made to support Ukraine,” Kuleba explained, “but when it comes to these big issues, the Coalition of the willing is more about branding and framing than actually offering answers to the most vital questions.”
‘We do not have another America’
A draft 28-point framework for peace presented to Ukraine earlier this month is now known to have been drafted in back-channel talks between US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and top Russian official Kirill Dmitriev.
A leaked tape of a call between Witkoff and another Kremlin aide, obtained by Bloomberg, revealed this week that Witkoff had been coaching the Russians on how to get President Trump on their side.
Asked if US negotiators could be trusted, Kuleba replied: “Not really, but we do not have another America.”
“So you have to engage with them, on the understanding that you cannot rely on them entirely,” he added.
“But there are so many issues where America is irreplaceable, that you cannot just say: we don’t want to have any business with you because you speak to the Russians too often and you put their ideas as your own ideas on the table.”
He added that the current push to close a peace deal has “already fallen apart” due to the “aggressive and erratic handling of this 28-point plan by Washington” and the damage caused by the leaking of the calls between US and Russian aides.
“But there will definitely be something new,” Kuleba explained. “So we will see this effort evolving into another effort. The problem is that it won’t be much different. It may be framed differently, there may be 15 or 30 or 35 points, but the content will be the same.”
“And the question is what do we have to do to change the substance of the proposal?”
Watch the full interview in the video player above.
