As US President Donald Trump and Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin conduct a planned phone call about a proposed peace plan in Ukraine on Tuesday, with the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia as a potential focal point of negotiations, European leaders who have been left out of the talks could only pressure Putin from the sidelines.
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy told the British parliament, “Now it is Putin who stands in the spotlight; Putin who must answer; Putin, who must choose. Are you serious, Mr Putin, about peace?”
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Trump spoke in vague terms about what would be covered in Tuesday’s call.
“I’ll be speaking to President Putin on Tuesday. A lot of work’s been done over the weekend,” he told reporters on Air Force One during a flight back to the capital from his resort home in Florida.
“We want to see if we can bring that war to an end. Maybe we can, maybe we can’t, but I think we have a very good chance,” Trump said. “We will be talking about land. We will be talking about power plants.”
The future of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the largest in Europe, has surfaced repeatedly in Trump’s recent, brief remarks about what he imagined would be the most difficult subjects to broach in talks between Kyiv and Moscow.
Last month, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov repeated Moscow’s position that Ukrainian territory already under Russian control are now “an inseparable part” of Russia, as they are enshrined in the country’s constitution.
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“This is undeniable and non-negotiable,” Peskov said.
The nuclear station has been under Moscow’s control since the first year of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, and has been monitored since then, with scant and reluctant Kremlin cooperation, by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
In April of 2024, the IAEA reported that the plant was attacked by drones that allegedly targeted Russian surveillance equipment. Russian troops tried to shoot down the drones, leading the agency to worry publicly about the potential for a nuclear disaster there.
In terms of other territory, Trump noted only that “I think we have a lot of it already discussed very much by both sides, Ukraine and Russia. We are already talking about that, dividing up certain assets.”
“Will you stop the fighting, or will you drag your feet and play games?”
European leaders, largely shut out of the discussions, sounded off on Monday.
“Will you stop the fighting, or will you drag your feet and play games, play lip service to a ceasefire while still pummeling Ukraine?” Lammy asked, adding, “We are not waiting for the Kremlin if they reject a ceasefire. We have more cards that we can play.”
On Monday, EU top diplomat Kaja Kallas noted: “What Russia has put forward makes it clear they don’t truly want peace. They are setting their ultimate war objectives as preconditions.”
On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron posted on social media about President Volodymyr Zelenksy’s “courage” in agreeing to a ceasefire. “Enough deaths. Enough lives destroyed. Enough destruction. The guns must fall silent,” Macron wrote.
He and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer have been leading efforts to establish a coalition “of the willing” that would provide European security forces in Ukraine in the event of a signed peace agreement. Both Starmer and Macron have said they are willing to put British and French troops on the ground there, but other NATO members have not committed to the same.
Those discussions will continue on Thursday, when dozens of military chiefs from that “coalition of the willing” are due to meet in London.
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