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The leaders of Europe and Canada held talks Tuesday about U.S.-led peace efforts to end the nearly four-year-old conflict. war between Russia and Ukrainewhile Moscow and Kyiv were arguing Russian allegations, denied by Ukraine, of a massive drone attack on a lakeside residence used by President Vladimir Putin.
The virtual meeting included European leaders as well as the Canadian Prime Minister. Marc Carneythe heads of European institutions and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, according to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
“Peace is on the horizon,” Tusk said during a Polish Cabinet meeting, according to Polish news agency PAP.
It was the first meeting of European leaders since the US president Donald Trump welcomed the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky Sunday in his Florida resort. Trump insisted that Ukraine and Russia were “closer than ever” to a peace deal, while acknowledging that lingering obstacles could still prevent a deal.
“We are moving the peace process forward,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who attended the talks, said in an article on X. “Transparency and honesty are now demanded from everyone, including Russia. »
His pointed reference to Russia came after Russian and Ukrainian officials exchanged bitter accusations over Moscow’s allegations that Ukraine tried to attack the Russian leader’s residence in northwest Russia with 91 long-range drones almost immediately after Sunday’s talks between Trump and Zelensky.
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The claims and counterclaims threatened to derail peace efforts. “I don’t like it. It’s not good,” Trump said Monday after Putin spoke to him by phone about the alleged attack.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha noted Tuesday that Russia “still has not provided plausible evidence” to support its allegations.
Moscow will not do so because “no such attack has taken place,” he wrote on X.
“Russia has a long history of false statements,” he added, referring to the Kremlin’s denials that it intended to attack Ukraine before its all-out invasion of its neighbor on February 24, 2022.
Zelensky, speaking Monday, also called the allegations “another lie” from Moscow designed to sabotage peace efforts.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov countered Tuesday that the alleged Ukrainian attack “was aimed at thwarting President Trump’s efforts to promote a peaceful resolution” to the war.
Throughout the war, Russia and Ukraine have exchanged accusations over attacks that cannot be independently verified due to the fighting.
Peskov did not say whether Moscow would present material evidence of the attack, such as drone debris, saying such a move would fall within the jurisdiction of the Russian military. “I don’t think there’s a need for evidence here,” he said.
Rural Novgorod is home to one of the official residences of the Russian presidency, Dolgie Borody, near the town of Valdai, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) northwest of Moscow. The area has been used since the Soviet era as a vacation spot for high-ranking government officials.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said that since Trump launched a diplomatic offensive earlier this year to end the war, “the Kremlin has sought to delay and prolong peace negotiations in order to continue its war undisturbed, to prevent the United States from imposing measures intended to pressure Russia into meaningful negotiations, and even to extract concessions on bilateral U.S.-Russian relations.”
© 2025 The Canadian Press
