Sánchez: “We welcome the talks with Russia, but they must not end in a new false conclusion”

Eduardo González The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, admitted this Monday in Paris that the decision of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, to start talks with Russia is an “opportunity” to achieve peace, but warned that “they cannot result in a new false conclusion”. “An opportunity has opened up, with the North American administration laying the foundations for talks to begin that lead to peace”, declared Pedro Sánchez during a press conference after the extraordinary European summit called by the French President, Emmanuel Macron, in Paris to define a common strategy in the face of the recent peace initiatives in Ukraine led by the United States and to strengthen the European position in the negotiations and guarantee the security of the continent. “We welcome the talks,” but “these talks that are going to be opened cannot result in a new false conclusion” because “it is not the first time that (Vladimir) Putin’s Russia has annexed foreign territory,” he warned. In Sánchez’s opinion, the objective of the talks must be to achieve a “fair and lasting peace” and, to do so, three “criteria” must be met: the “active involvement of Ukraine, which is the attacked country, and of the threatened political project, which is the EU”; that “the multilateral order and international law be strengthened,” because “it cannot be that the aggressor is rewarded and the struggle of the attacked is not recognized”; and that “the EU emerges strengthened from this peace conversation,” because, “in the face of adversity, we need more Europe.” Likewise, Pedro Sánchez affirmed that another challenge is the reinforcement of security guarantees “so that what has happened with Putin’s Russia for ten years does not happen again.” To do this, he warned, “the responsibility and unity of all allies” is needed. “Of all allies,” he repeated, in obvious allusion, without mentioning it, to the United States. Regarding the financing of security and defense, Sánchez assured that “Spain maintains its commitment to reach the two percent” in defense spending established by the various NATO summits, but he also warned of the need to strengthen European unity in this matter. “Europe has to define security and defense as a public good” and, therefore, “we need to articulate joint mechanisms to be able to finance security and defense,” he said. “The European debate is how to finance security and defense in the face of the new geopolitical scenario and Putin’s threats” and, in that context, “the flexibility of fiscal rules” for security and defense “is good news, but it is not enough.”

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