Wanted: Someone to talk to Russia

 

 

Wiktor Nummelin/TT

 

Published 05.30

         

        Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has demanded that EU heads of state and government discuss          who should represent the EU in any potential negotiations with Russia. File photo. Photo: Roberto              Monaldo/AP/TT

An irritated Eastern Europe does not want to be sidelined by the West in any potential talks with Russia.

Now, the search is on for someone who can speak on behalf of everyone.

Friday’s informal EU summit in Dublin was expected to be dominated by discussions on AI. However, reality caught up—in the form of various conversations with Russia regarding the war in Ukraine, which have begun to take place at different levels.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre were not met with cheers from their European counterparts when they took it upon themselves to call President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

“Europe must speak with a single, powerful voice,” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wrote last week in a letter to the President of the European Council, António Costa.

Costa or Kallas?

Costa promptly agreed to add the topic to Friday’s agenda. This has, however, fueled speculation that he may have asked Meloni to write the letter. He himself is considered a strong candidate, given his role as chair for all EU heads of state and government.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, is also a prominent candidate. In several parts of Southern Europe, however, the Estonian Kallas is viewed as far too “hawkish” in her stance toward Russia. A third high-ranking figure is European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who has been indirectly involved in many of the recent discussions through her chief of staff, Björn Seibert.

Irritation in the East

Seibert has been present on the sidelines of the talks held this week in Abu Dhabi between the US, Russia, and Ukraine—as have Geoffrey van Leeuwen, chief of staff to NATO chief Mark Rutte, and Anna-Maria Boura, a top foreign policy advisor to the Commission President.

Furthermore, Germany, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom have had their own national security advisors on the ground.

No Eastern Europeans have been included, which has sparked irritation—particularly in Poland, a nation that, over the last 250 years, has frequently been dismembered, partitioned, and dominated by great powers.

"The last thing we want is for Western Europe to deal with Russia over the heads of the Eastern Europeans," Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski told TT and other Brussels-based correspondents during a meeting in Warsaw.

Meloni herself?

A major challenge lies in finding someone who can truly make Russia listen. It could be Giorgia Meloni herself—or so suggests a former Russian spy interviewed by the news outlet *EUobserver*.

"Meloni has charisma. She is determined and unpredictable. She can be ruthless, and that is something Putin can relate to. Meloni definitely interests him," says "Sergei," a former intelligence officer now living in the West. 

Facts

EU-Russia Talks

In the past, the EU and Russia held regular summits twice a year—often in the spring in Russia and in the autumn in an EU member state.

The last such meeting took place in January 2014, when the then-President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, and the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, hosted President Vladimir Putin in Brussels.

Since then, EU leaders have also met with Putin on the sidelines of G20 summits—though not since 2019, with the exception of a virtual meeting hosted by Saudi Arabia in 2020. Putin has been invited to the upcoming G20 summit in the United States in December, but he has not yet confirmed his attendance.

Putin and Russia have not participated in the G7 since 2013, when the group was still known as the G8. It remains unclear whether Putin will be invited to the next summit, to be held in the United States in 2027.