Peace plan panic: Does the EU still have a say in Ukraine’s future?

EU Confidential

POLITICO

Politics, News Commentary, News

4.4 • 175 Ratings

🗓️ 28 November 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Washington–Moscow peace maneuvers caught Europe off guard this week — raising questions about the EU’s continued relevance and readiness at a pivotal moment for Ukraine.Nick Vinocur, one of our regular guests, takes the host seat this time to speak with Veronika Melkozerova in Kyiv about how these peace talks look from inside a country still under attack.Then POLITICO’s finance reporter Bjarke Smith-Meyer and Wouter Verschelden, author of Belgium’s influential political newsletter W16, break down the EU’s internal fight over Russia’s frozen assets — arguably Europe’s strongest political and financial leverage in the peace-talk moment — and examine why Belgium continues to block the reparations loan Ukraine urgently needs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Have you ever wondered what a sandwich sounds like?
0:04.0	Not much to it, is there?
0:06.0	Unless, of course, it's a Walker's sandwich.
0:10.0	Mmm, that is good.
0:13.0	Now that's what Asani should sound like.
0:16.0	Go all crisp in with walkers.
0:18.0	Delicious.
0:20.0	Hello! What a week to be guest hosting EU confidential, just as Europe tries to catch up with history in real time.
0:28.2	I'm Nick Vinnikor, Politico's chief foreign affairs correspondent, and I'm sitting in this week for Sarah Wheaton.
0:35.5	I have to say, deja vu all over again.
0:39.6	The United States has put forward a peace plan for the war in Ukraine, and Europe
0:45.7	has nothing to do with it.
0:48.2	Apparently, this plan was cooked up between Washington and Moscow with no European
0:53.7	or Ukrainian input.
0:56.5	Then Bloomberg drops leaked calls showing Trump's special envoy Steve Whitkoff having a remarkably
1:03.5	friendly conversation with one of Putin's top advisors and even coaching him on how to win
1:09.8	Trump over. A whole new layer of unease about who was
1:14.0	actually drafting that peace plan and for whose benefit. And of course, in the original 28-point
1:20.7	plan had some jaw-dropping details. Ukraine would give up Don Basque and Luhansk, reduce the size of its armies. There's
1:30.7	even a line in the document about using Russia's frozen assets in Europe with Washington taking a
1:37.8	hefty cut and Europe having to cough up $100 billion on top of the Russian assets. For Brussels, it wasn't just provocative. It was
1:48.0	scandalous, as we quoted one official here saying. And about those frozen assets, they're the
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