NATO foreign ministers will meet in Brussels Wednesday, and the ongoing negotiations to end the war in Ukraine will be top of mind. But there will be a notable absence: The U.S.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The war in Ukraine is top of the agenda at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels today, but there will be a very notable absence – Secretary of State Marco Rubio. It’s the first time the U.S. is not represented in more than 20 years. From Brussels, Teri Schultz reports on concerns about who is being left out of a U.S.-backed peace process for Ukraine.
TERI SCHULTZ: No voice, no veto power. European diplomats are watching from the sidelines while the U.S. negotiates what happens at the front line.
JIM TOWNSEND: There’s this thinking in the administration about too many cooks in the kitchen, and so they wanted to keep the European cooks out.
SCHULTZ: Jim Townsend is a former Pentagon official with decades working on European and NATO policy. He’s currently holding consultations in Europe with the Atlantic Council, an international affairs think tank.
TOWNSEND: It’s been very painful to watch, knowing the European issues, knowing what’s at stake for them and knowing that they can be a part of the solution, too.
SCHULTZ: Still, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte had nothing but compliments for the process.
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MARK RUTTE: It was only the American president who was able to break that deadlock in the end, and he did. And therefore, these talks are now underway. We do not yet know whether they will be successful. We will try everything we can do to be as positively involved as possible.
SCHULTZ: Europeans have had some success, for example, in helping to rewrite the original 28-point peace plan presented by Washington into one less overwhelmingly favorable to Moscow. The new draft did not rule out eventual NATO and European Union membership for Kyiv, nor some kind of reassurance force provided by European militaries in Ukraine. But no one knows for sure what U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff presented to the Russians. With the Trump administration continually reminding Europe it will have the primary responsibility in supporting Ukraine, Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson urges Washington to stay in close contact.
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PAL JONSON: Nothing about the Europeans without the Europeans. And we, of course, are going to have a central role in the rebuilding of Ukraine as well, so the more we are involved, the better of a peace agreement we can achieve.
SCHULTZ: But Secretary of State Marco Rubio is skipping Wednesday’s NATO ministerial meeting. It’s the first time in decades a U.S. secretary of state won’t attend the regular meeting, which takes place just after Witkoff and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner held talks in the Kremlin and as Russian President Vladimir Putin blames Europe for preventing progress in the negotiations.
For NPR News, I’m Teri Schultz in Brussels.
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