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17-02-2025
PARIS: European leaders will gather in France tomorrow for an emergency summit amid US efforts to agree a deal with Russia to end the war in Ukraine.
Governments on the continent fear the White House could strike a deal which damages European security and will seek to present a united front.
In the coming days, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to meet Russian officials in Saudi Arabia but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he was not invited to those talks.
He has repeatedly said he would not agree any ceasefire which is negotiated without Ukrainian input.
It comes after US President Donald Trump spoke on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this week to discuss a possible deal.
After a chaotic week, Zelensky is trying to re-assert his position, our correspondent in Ukraine James Waterhouse writes.
Zelensky has tried to re-assert his country’s position after a week of murky contradictions on the political stage.
He rejected an initial proposal by the US to access Ukraine’s rare earth minerals in exchange for continued military aid, saying that the promise of security guarantees was “missing” from the draft agreement.
Speaking at one of many press conference he has held this week, he said: “These are investments, and we can think about profit only if everything is linked to (our) security guarantees.”
There had been reports that Washington wanted the rights to billions of dollars’ worth of natural resources for the support it had given to date not for what it would deliver in the future.
With a question mark hanging over Ukrainian representation at upcoming peace talks in Saudi Arabia, Zelensky is expected to host Keith Kellogg America’s special envoy to Ukraine next week.
The retired general has already said Europe won’t be involved in any negotiations, despite the White House calling for the bloc to step up its security and military support.
Zelensky says he plans to take the US envoy to the front line because, as he put it “America needs more details and a deeper understanding of what is happening on the ground”.
There is no point talking about US access to Ukraine’s vast mineral wealth unless the problem of its unexploded landmines is also addressed.
That’s the warning from James Cowan, who heads UK-based landmine clearing charity the Halo Trust.
Speaking to media on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, the former British army Maj Gen says: “The problem in Ukraine is huge. The Ukrainians estimate 156,000 sq km (60,232 sq miles) are contaminated by landmines or other explosive munitions.”
“These mines are laid on the most productive farm land in Europe and are significantly damaging Ukraine’s economy,” he adds.
General Cowan has blamed Ukrainian state bureaucracy for delays in clearing the country of what he said were millions of unexploded landmines, concentrated in the war-torn east of the country. About a quarter of Ukraine’s landmass is estimated to be contaminated with landmines.
Ukraine’s government is understood to have drawn up a draft deal that would give the US access to large mineral deposits including ‘rare earths’ such as Lithium. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
