Key exclusions in talks expose divide

By YANG RAN and REN QI | China Daily | Updated: 2025-02-20 09:42 US Secretary of State Marco Rubio greets Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Riyadh on Tuesday. Although US Secretary of State Marco Rubio later assured there would be engagement and consultation with Ukraine and European nations on the Ukraine issue, European leaders expressed concern over being sidelined from the closed-door talks, fearing their interests might be ignored in US President Donald Trump's pursuit of his Ukraine deal. European nations have been left at "the kids' table" in discussions over the future of Ukraine, said Armin Papperger, CEO of Rheinmetall, Germany's largest defense contractor, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, as reported by the Financial Times on Tuesday. French President Emmanuel Macron was scheduled to host a meeting on Ukraine on Wednesday, aiming to coordinate a European response to what he describes as an "existential threat" from Russia, following the US policy shift. Dmitry Suslov, deputy director of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the National Research University-Higher School of Economics in Moscow, said the discussions revolved around initiating full-scale negotiations to resolve the Ukraine crisis, with both sides resuming normal diplomatic interactions across a broad agenda.