Europe on edge after Trump envoy’s ‘translation blunder’ amid high-stakes peace talks

London: European leaders have ramped up their warnings to US President Donald Trump about his plans for a peace deal on Ukraine, amid claims that his top envoy misjudged Russian demands for territory due to a translation blunder.

Eight more European nations called for a hard line against Russian President Vladimir Putin in his meeting with Trump this Friday, insisting that Trump could not negotiate a deal without Ukraine and Europe having a say in the outcome.

“Negotiations can only take place in context of a ceasefire,” said the leaders of eight Baltic and Nordic nations stretching from Norway to Latvia.

“The people of Ukraine must have the freedom to decide their future. The path to peace cannot be charted without Ukraine’s voice. No decisions on Ukraine without Ukraine, and no decisions on Europe without Europe.”

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky is seeking a seat at the table when Trump meets Putin in Alaska on Friday, declaring that he is willing to agree to a ceasefire but will not cede the land claimed by Russia.

The statement from the Nordic and Baltic leaders came one day after British, Finnish, French, German, Italian and Polish leaders, joined by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, declared that any outcome must protect the security interests of Ukraine and Europe.

An embarrassing translation error is fuelling concerns in Europe over Trump’s ability to negotiate an outcome with Putin that protects European sovereignty, as Putin demands formal control of at least four regions of eastern Ukraine.

German newspaper Bild reported that Trump’s special envoy, former New York property developer Steve Witkoff, misunderstood Putin’s goals during a meeting in Moscow last week.

Bild reported that Witkoff thought Russia was proposing its “peaceful withdrawal” from Kherson and Zaporizhzhia when Putin was instead demanding the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from those regions.

“Witkoff doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” a Ukrainian government official told Bild, adding that the German government shared this view.

‘It’s not going to make anybody super happy’

A White House official told the Associated Press that Trump was open to a trilateral summit with both the Russian and Ukrainian leaders, but was planning the bilateral meeting requested by Putin.

The statement from the Nordic-Baltic Eight represented the views of the leaders of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden.

US Vice President JD Vance said a negotiated settlement between Russia and Ukraine was unlikely to satisfy either side, saying the US was seeking a settlement both countries could accept.

“It’s not going to make anybody super happy. Both the Russians and the Ukrainians, probably, at the end of the day, are going to be unhappy with it,” he said on Fox News on Sunday, Washington time.

Vance’s comments appeared to acknowledge that Zelensky would be part of the discussions in some way, if not directly with Putin in Alaska.

“We’re at a point now where we’re trying to figure out, frankly, scheduling and things like that, around when these three leaders could sit down and discuss an end to this conflict,” he said.

Russian strikes injured at least 12 people in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, the country’s Foreign Ministry said on Sunday.

Trump has said a potential deal would involve “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both” countries – signalling an outcome fiercely opposed by Ukraine.

EU foreign ministers will meet on Monday to discuss next steps.

“The US has the power to force Russia to negotiate seriously,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Sunday.

“Any deal between the US and Russia must have Ukraine, and the EU included, for it is a matter of Ukraine’s and the whole of Europe’s security.”

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told the ABC network in the US that Friday’s summit “will be about testing Putin” on how serious he was about ending the war.

Rutte said a deal could not include legal recognition of Russian control over Ukrainian land, though it might include de facto recognition.

He compared it to the situation after World War II when Washington accepted that the Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were de facto controlled by the Soviet Union but did not legally recognise their annexation.

In addition to Crimea, which it seized in 2014, Russia has formally claimed the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia as its own, although it controls only about 70 per cent of the last three. It holds smaller pieces of territory in three other regions, while Ukraine says it holds a sliver of Russia’s Kursk region.

With Reuters, AP

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