Follow us on social

Diplomacy Watch: Denmark offers to hold Ukraine peace talks in July

Diplomacy Watch: Denmark offers to hold Ukraine peace talks in July

The Danish foreign minister said a summit would need buy-in from outside of Europe to succeed.

Analysis | Europe

The Danish foreign minister said Monday that his country would host a peace summit in July if the time is right for talks.

“If Ukraine finds that the time has come to have such a meeting, that would be fantastic,” Lokke Rasmussen said at a European Union event in Brussels. “And then Denmark would obviously like to host the meeting.”

Notably, Rasmussen said that “we need to put some effort into creating a global commitment to organize such a meeting.” This would mean getting support from China, Brazil, and India, all of which have expressed interest in getting Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table.

Rasmussen’s comments mark the first time that an EU and NATO member country has thrown its weight behind the idea of inclusive talks since the early days of the conflict, suggesting a potential shift in how the continent views the path forward in Ukraine.

There is, however, one significant gap: the Danish diplomat expressed doubt that Russia would attend, telling reporters that it is “hard to see” Moscow joining the initiative. Rasmussen did not clarify his reasoning on this point, but one could speculate that he is unsure whether Moscow would be open to the timing and venue of the talks.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a surprise appearance at the Group of 7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan, this past weekend, where he pressed leaders to support his “peace formula” and secured U.S. support for providing F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. 

In a joint statement following the summit, the G7 leaders called on China “to press Russia to stop its military aggression, and immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw its troops from Ukraine.”

Zelensky also made a stopover in Saudi Arabia for the Arab League Summit in an attempt to drum up support from Arab leaders, many of whom have chosen to maintain a neutral stance toward the conflict. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba took a simultaneous trip to Africa, highlighting Kyiv’s renewed determination to win hearts and minds across the Global South.

But some of these efforts went more smoothly than others. Zelensky was reportedly set to meet with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a prominent booster of peace talks, at the G7, but the Ukrainian leader appears to have stood Lula up. 

When asked if he was disappointed to have missed the meeting, Zelensky joked that “I think he was disappointed.” The high-profile snub could put Lula’s peace efforts on ice, according to Andre Pagliarini, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute and professor at Hampden-Sydney College.

“[R]elations between Brazil and Ukraine are colder now than they were last week,” Pagliarini wrote in RS. “Indeed, one might even conclude that the Brazilian president is now giving up on the prospect of contributing to a formal peace between Russia and Ukraine.”

In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:

— Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has renewed his push to protect the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as Ukraine winds up its counteroffensive, according to the Washington Post. Given that Russia and Ukraine have both balked at the idea of creating a demilitarized zone around the facility, Grossi has reportedly drafted a more modest proposal that would ban certain activities near the plant. The United Nations Security Council is expected to hear Grossi’s pitch at a meeting before the end of this month.

— Pope Francis appointed Cardinal Matteo Zuppi — a prominent Italian cleric — as his peace envoy for the war in Ukraine, according to the Wall Street Journal. Zuppi, who is among the frontrunners to succeed Francis as pope, has a long history of pushing for peace around the world and even became an honorary citizen of Mozambique after a successful effort to end that country’s brutal civil war. The Italian cardinal praised Pope Francis’s approach to the war during a speech on Wednesday. “War is a pandemic,” Zuppi said. “It involves us all.”

— Hungarian President Viktor Orban said Wednesday that, given that NATO will not fight Russia directly, “there is no victory for the poor Ukrainians on the battlefield,” according to Al Jazeera. “The war can be stopped only if the Russians can make an agreement with the U.S.,” Orban continued. “In Europe, we are not happy with that, but it’s the only way out.”

— European leaders are struggling to build support for Ukraine in South America, where many countries have preferred to maintain a neutral stance on the conflict, according to Politico. An unnamed Chilean official told the outlet that the war is “a topic that needs to be solved by the big powers, not something we can do from the end of the world.”

U.S. State Department news:

In a Monday press conference, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller addressed allegations that U.S. weapons were used in an attack on the Russian town of Belgorod. “We have made very clear to the Ukrainians that we don’t enable or encourage attacks outside Ukrainians’ borders, but I do think it’s important to take a step back and remind everyone, and remind the world, that, of course, it is Russia that launched this war,” Miller said, adding that “it is up to Ukraine to decide how they want to conduct their military operations.”


Analysis | Europe
Trump and Keith Kellogg
Top photo credit: U.S. President Donald Trump and Keith Kellogg (now Trump's Ukraine envoy) in 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Trump's silence on loss of Ukraine lithium territory speaks volumes

Europe

Last week, Russian military forces seized a valuable lithium field in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, the latest success of Moscow’s grinding summer offensive.

The lithium deposit in question is considered rather small by industry analysts, but is said to be a desirable prize nonetheless due to the concentration and high-quality of its ore. In other words, it is just the kind of asset that the Trump administration seemed eager to exploit when it signed its much heralded minerals agreement with Ukraine earlier this year.

keep readingShow less
Is the US now funding the bloodbath at Gaza aid centers?
Top photo credit: Palestinians walk to collect aid supplies from the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. REUTERS/Hatem Khaled/File Photo

Is the US now funding the bloodbath at Gaza aid centers?

Middle East

Many human rights organizations say it should shut down. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have killed hundreds of Palestinians at or around its aid centers. And yet, the U.S. has committed no less than $30 million toward the controversial, Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

As famine-like conditions grip Gaza, the GHF says it has given over 50 million meals to Palestinians at its four aid centers in central and southern Gaza Strip since late May. These centers are operated by armed U.S. private contractors, and secured by IDF forces present at or near them.

keep readingShow less
mali
Heads of state of Mali, Assimi Goita, Niger, General Abdourahamane Tiani and Burkina Faso, Captain Ibrahim Traore, pose for photographs during the first ordinary summit of heads of state and governments of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in Niamey, Niger July 6, 2024. REUTERS/Mahamadou Hamidou//File Photo

Post-coup juntas across the Sahel face serious crises

Africa

In Mali, General Assimi Goïta, who took power in a 2020 coup, now plans to remain in power through at least the end of this decade, as do his counterparts in neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. As long-ruling juntas consolidate power in national capitals, much of the Sahelian terrain remains out of government control.

Recent attacks on government security forces in Djibo (Burkina Faso), Timbuktu (Mali), and Eknewane (Niger) have all underscored the depth of the insecurity. The Sahelian governments face a powerful threat from jihadist forces in two organizations, Jama‘at Nusrat al-Islam wa-l-Muslimin (the Group for Supporting Islam and Muslims, JNIM, which is part of al-Qaida) and the Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP). The Sahelian governments also face conventional rebel challengers and interact, sometimes in cooperation and sometimes in tension, with various vigilantes and community-based armed groups.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.