Good morning. It’s Monday. I’m Mared Gwyn. Today: Europe braces as Trump turns up the heat on Zelenskyy, and Ireland’s EU budget compromise falls dead on arrival.
Kyiv under pressure: For Ukraine, the past few days have brought back the distinct taste of the Oval Office showdown: public pressure on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accusations that Ukraine is obstructing peace and a growing fear (again) that the aim is not compromise, let alone a just peace, but to force Ukraine to surrender, our correspondent Sasha Vakulina writes this morning.
Blindsided: US President Donald Trump made a surprise announcement on Sunday that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to an immediate ceasefire on attacks against energy infrastructure. There was just one rather significant problem: at least one of those parties appeared unaware of the agreement.
“If President Trump negotiated it with Putin, please tell us when the ceasefire begins,” Zelenskyy said in response. Ukraine, he added, was ready.
It was not entirely clear Moscow got the memo either, Sasha explains. After Trump’s announcement, Russia struck a thermal power plant in Kharkiv, before targeting several other power plants overnight. And that was only Sunday.
Diesel deal rattles Europeans: On Friday, Trump had also announced a deal with Vladimir Putin to ease sanctions on Russian diesel exports, without informing Ukrainian or European negotiators who were in Miami for talks. It’s seen as an effort to bring down soaring diesel and gasoline prices, a major issue for American voters, ahead of the November 3 midterm elections.
Zelenskyy did not mince his words, branding the deal “weak” and warning it would hand Putin “billions” more to wage war. Trump told him he “better damn well stop” striking Russian refineries, before taking it further and saying Ukraine needed a “new leader”. Putin’s leadership, notably, did not come up for discussion.
Rallying around Zelenskyy: There is another irony for Trump: publicly berating Zelenskyy has hardly proven an effective way of weakening him at home - quite the opposite. EU leaders have also been rallying behind the Ukrainian leader – and Zelenskyy is now expected to join leaders when they gather for a summit in Brussels this Thursday and Friday, sources have told Euronews.
Hard reckoning: News of the Trump-Putin diesel deal and the subsequent energy ceasefire is also set to dominate the conversation today in Brussels and Luxembourg, where foreign ministers are gathering, Jorge Liboreiro writes.
Once again, the EU finds itself scrambling to close ranks behind Zelenskyy and push back, with calculated criticism, against Trump’s Russian-friendly diplomacy.
The US Treasury’s sanctions waiver to enable the diesel sales, set to last until April 2027, has particularly enraged Europeans, who see their own sanctions regime undermined by Trump’s out-of-the-blue decisions. It must be noted that the majority of vessels that Russia uses to trade its refined oil products are subject to the G7 price cap ($100 per barrel).
Foreign ministers will today make clear their pressure campaign on Moscow will continue unabated by formally blacklisting more than 1,600 people and companies accused of enabling the war, a record number in one go.
“We are of course continuing our path,” Kallas said on sanctions upon arriving in Luxembourg this morning. “Our message is clear. If we want to end this war, the only way we can do this is putting more pressure on Russia, and we would call on the US to put the sanctions in place so we can finish this war,” she added.
More is needed: Russia’s all-out escalation has forced EU officials and diplomats to admit that their multibillion-euro support for Ukraine will fall short next year. But there are no easy solutions, Jorge writes in his in-depth analysis.
Warsaw watches: The mounting tensions have also raised the stakes of the Warsaw Security Conference kicking off this morning, with President Zelenskyy expected to address delegates from Kyiv in around an hour.
Our chief EU editor Maria Tadeo, on the ground in the Polish capital, reports that security is tight and the mood tense after Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Sunday that a man had been arrested on suspicion of plotting to assassinate him and his defence minister. More from our Warsaw colleagues.
Dead on arrival: Meanwhile, a new pitch to trim down the EU’s next long-term budget – known as the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) – tabled by Ireland over the weekend has been met with immediate pushback from the so-called frugal countries, which are demanding a much smaller spending pot.
“The size of the new proposal is not a basis for agreement. The EU budget must be affordable for those who bear the brunt of financing it,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in a statement on Saturday.
Dutch directness: Dutch Finance Minister Eelco Heinen was even more blunt. “The Netherlands cannot accept this proposal. At this rate, there will be no deal by the end of the year,” he said in a statement. Sweden also rejected the proposal, insisting that the “overall volume” needs to come down.
Ireland, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, on Saturday pitched €141 billion in cuts to the previous proposal in an attempt to appease the frugals. The country’s EU affairs minister, Thomas Byrne, described the proposal as a “compromise designed to act as a catalyst” for wrapping up negotiations by the end of this year – a prospect that now looks increasingly remote.
Crunch time: EU leaders are set to tackle the budget issue when they gather for talks in Brussels on Thursday and Friday – and European Council President António Costa is pushing for a swift compromise. There has been a political push to wrap up the budget negotiations before the end of 2026 to prevent talks from being torpedoed by elections in major EU economies including France, Italy and Poland next year. My colleague Luca Bertuzzi has more.
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