President Trump’s special envoy arrived in Russia on Friday to try to make progress on cease-fire talks over the war in Ukraine, meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin in St. Petersburg.
Around the same time, Ukraine’s allies met in Brussels to announce new military support for Kyiv and expressed doubt about Moscow’s commitment to peace.
The pair of meetings highlighted the widening approaches to the crisis between the U.S. and Europe.
Russia shows little sign that it is interested in peace, the German defense minister, Boris Pistorius, said in Brussels. He announced a surge of military support for Ukraine after a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, representing some 50 countries, including the United States.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attended virtually, as did President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and several other ministers.
Russia must understand that Ukraine can continue the fight, Mr. Pistorius said. “Given Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine, we must concede peace in Ukraine appears to be out of reach in the immediate future,” he said. “We will ensure that Ukraine continues to benefit from our joint military support.” Russia, he said, “is still not interested in peace.”
Mr. Trump has demanded that both sides agree to an immediate 30-day cease-fire, hoping to extend that pause into negotiations on a more permanent settlement of the long war. Ukraine has agreed, but Mr. Putin has not, instead asking to remove some of the Western sanctions against his country first in addition to broader commitments that “remove the root causes of this crisis.”