Russia ready for war if Europe wants one, Putin says ahead of meeting with U.S. officials on Ukraine

Is the momentum with Putin?

I’m Chris Brown, a former Moscow correspondent for CBC News who’s now in London.

The optics of this key day of diplomacy are notable and not in a good way for Ukraine’s president.

While his country’s fate is being deliberated — and Ukraine territory potentially dissected — by top U.S. and Russian negotiators in Moscow, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is on the other side of Europe meeting Ireland’s prime minister.

European leaders have adopted the motto of “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine,” but Donald Trump has different ideas. His envoy, Steve Witkoff, has been to Moscow many times over the months of attempted peacemaking — but he has never visited Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, appears to believe he has momentum both on the battlefield and on the diplomatic front. Coming out of today’s Kremlin meetings, observers will be looking for any sign that he’s prepared to step back from any of his key demands — namely, that Ukraine turn over hundreds of square kilometres of land that Russia has not conquered, and that Zelenskyy accept Russian-imposed limits on the size of Ukraine’s army and a ban on foreign troops on Ukrainian soil.