itstargetnews
The leaders of Europe and Canada held talks on Tuesday about US-led peace efforts to end the nearly four-year-old war between Russia and Ukraineover which Moscow and Kyiv argued Russian claims, denied by Ukraine, of a massive drone attack on the lakeside residence used by President Vladimir Putin.
The virtual meeting was attended by European leaders, as well as the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carneyleaders of European institutions and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.
“Peace is on the horizon,” Tusk said at a meeting of the Polish government, Polish news agency PAP reports.
It was the first meeting of European leaders after the American president Donald Trump hosted the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyi at his Florida resort on Sunday. Trump insisted that Ukraine and Russia are “closer than ever” to a peace settlement, although he acknowledged that outstanding obstacles could still prevent a deal.
“We are advancing the peace process,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who attended the talks, said in a post on X. “Transparency and honesty are now being demanded of everyone – including Russia.”
His scathing 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 northwestern Russia with 91 long-range drones almost immediately after Trump’s Sunday talks with Zelensky.
Get daily national news
Get the day’s top news, political, economic and current affairs headlines delivered to your inbox once a day.
The demands and counterclaims threatened to derail peace efforts. “I don’t like it. It’s not good,” Trump said Monday after Putin told him by phone about the alleged attack.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha noted on Tuesday that Russia “has not yet provided any convincing evidence” to support its claims.
Moscow will not do this because “such an attack did not happen,” he wrote on X.
“Russia has a long record of false claims,” he added, referring to the Kremlin’s denials that it intended to attack Ukraine ahead of its February 24, 2022, all-out invasion of the neighbor.
Zelenskyy, speaking on Monday, also labeled the accusations as “another lie” from Moscow designed to sabotage peace efforts.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov shot back on Tuesday that the alleged Ukrainian attack was “aimed at thwarting President Trump’s efforts to promote a peaceful solution” to the war.
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged accusations of attacks during the war that cannot be independently confirmed because of the fighting.
Peskov did not say whether Moscow would present physical evidence of the attack, such as the wreckage of the drone, saying such a step would be a matter for the Russian military. “I don’t think there needs to be any evidence here,” he said.
The rural Novgorod region 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 as a vacation retreat for high-ranking government officials since the Soviet era.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think-tank, said that since Trump launched a diplomatic push to end the war earlier this year, “the Kremlin has sought to delay and prolong peace talks in order to continue its war unhindered, prevent the US from imposing measures aimed at pressuring Russia into meaningful negotiations, and even extract concessions on bilateral US-Russia relations.”
© 2025 The Canadian Press
