Brussels,<\/p>\n
German Chancellor Angela\u00a0Merkel\u00a0on Friday insisted that the\u00a0EU\u00a0should be able to\u00a0talk\u00a0to Russian leader Vladimir\u00a0Putin, after other leaders from the bloc thwarted her push for a summit.<\/p>\n
“The president of the US met for a serious\u00a0talk\u00a0with Vladimir\u00a0Putin, which I did not have the impression was a reward for the Russian president,”\u00a0Merkel\u00a0told a press conference after\u00a0EU\u00a0talks in Brussels.<\/p>\n
“A\u00a0sovereign\u00a0EU, in my opinion, should also be able to represent the interests of the\u00a0EU\u00a0in such a similar conversation.”<\/p>\n
Germany and France rattled wary\u00a0EU counterparts especially those neighboring Russia with a proposal to restart talks between Putin\u00a0and the bloc, frozen since Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014.<\/p>\n
Leaders rejected the push during hours of late-night wrangling in Brussels, with opponents arguing it risked sending the wrong message to\u00a0Putin\u00a0in the face of ongoing aggression from Moscow.<\/p>\n
“We believe that it is far too premature and that now it would be a kind of reward for Russia’s President, for his politics, but unfortunately aggressive policy, provoking neighbors, attacks of various kinds,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said.<\/p>\n
Italy’s Mario Draghi, who backed a meeting between all\u00a0EU\u00a0leaders and\u00a0Putin, said that the proposal had come “a bit as a surprise” and upset the countries most worried about Moscow.<\/p>\n
He said that the bloc had “substantially shelved this idea, at least for the moment”.<\/p>\n
The Kremlin said it “regretted” the decision by the\u00a0EU\u00a0to reject talks and insisted that\u00a0Putin\u00a0“remains interested in establishing working relations between Moscow and Brussels”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Brussels, German Chancellor Angela\u00a0Merkel\u00a0on Friday insisted that the\u00a0EU\u00a0should be able to\u00a0talk\u00a0to Russian leader Vladimir\u00a0Putin, after other leaders from the bloc thwarted her push for a summit. “The president of the US met for a serious\u00a0talk\u00a0with Vladimir\u00a0Putin, which I did not have the impression was a reward for the Russian president,”\u00a0Merkel\u00a0told a press conference after\u00a0EU\u00a0talks in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":20803,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1366,31,1472],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-news","category-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20802"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20804,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20802\/revisions\/20804"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}