L to R: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky; UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer; French President Emmanuel Macron; and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in front of 10 Downing Street, London, December 8, 2025 (Kin Cheung/AP)

Monday’s Coverage: Zelensky to Meet European Leaders in London

UPDATE 1136 GMT:

European Union foreign policy head Kaja Kallas has warned against European countries, under US pressure, “walking into Russian traps” over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Kallas notes that the Kremlin is “just pretending” to want negotiations as others try to press Kyiv: “Otherwise Russia is not coming to the table, and then you get a baseline where Ukraine has agreed to concessions, and Russia hasn’t, and that is the baseline which can only get worse.”

She summarizes, “That’s why we have had this very, very clear stance that we should not walk into those to those traps and we have clear points that we want to see [from Russia].” Europeans should show more “self-confidence” as “for any peace plan to work, it needs Europeans”.

“If the Europeans or Ukrainians are not agreeing to this, then it just doesn’t work,” she concludes.

UPDATE 0843 GMT:

Donald Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are pressuring Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to agree to Russia’s seizure of all of the Donetsk region, say two Ukrainian officials.

One official said the US position has worsened after Witkoff and Kushner’s 5-hour meeting with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin last Tuesday.

They said the envoys seemed to want a clear “yes” from Zelensky to their demands in a 2-hour call on Saturday: “It felt like the US was trying to sell us in different ways the Russian desire to take the whole of Donbas and that the Americans wanted Zelensky to accept all of it.”

Zelensky only received the revised American demands an hour before the call.

The Ukrianian official said the demands also related to control of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southern Ukraine, and it left key questions unanswered on security guarantees.

“There are major things about territory which need to be discussed more: who controls what, who stays where, who withdraws, and if Ukraine withdraws from the contact line, how to make sure that Russia does the same and [doesn’t continue] with the fighting,” summarized the official.

UPDATE 0836 GMT:

For the first time since 2009, Russian food producers have reduced their output because consumers are cutting back on purchases.

From January to September 2025, food production fell by 0.6% year-on-year and beverage production declined 4.1%. Between January and November, the number of new investment projects in food production decreased by 46% compared to the same period last year.

Investment activity in food sector has reverted to 2013 levels before international sanctions were imposed on Russia over the illegal seizure of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.

Food production is declining because of labor shortages, accelerating inflation, rising accounts payable, a high key interest rate, and Russians’ shift to savings.

“Consumers are increasingly foregoing indulgence products (kebabs, meat and cheese delicacies, etc.), opting for simpler foods,” summarizes Nikolai Lychev, the Managing Partner of Agrotrend.ru. Russians are switching to buying groceries only on special offers and shopping at discount stores.

UPDATE 0824 GMT:

A 61-year-old Ukrainian woman has been sentenced to 12 1/2 years in prison by a Russian court in the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region in southern Ukraine.

Maryna Bilousova was charged with treason over a donation to Ukraine’s armed forces in January 2024.

UPDATE 0816 GMT:

Three residents were murdered and 16 wounded by Russian attacks on the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine on Monday.

Two civilians were slain in Kostiantynivka and one in Druzhkivka.

In the Kherson region in the south, two civilians were murdered, including an 87-year-old woman, and five injured.

Three apartment buildings, eight private houses, a farm, a cell tower, a water tower, a gas pipeline, and private vehicles were damaged.

UPDATE 0753 GMT:

The toll has risen to 38 civilians murdered from Russia’s missile strike on Ternopil in western Ukraine on November 19.

Police identified the bodies of two victims previously considered missing from the strike on a high-rise residential building.

Among the slain were seven chlidren, including a 7-year-old Polish girl. Another 94 civilians, among them 18 children, were wounded.

UPDATE 0740 GMT:

European Union leaders will meet on December 18-19, seeking confirmation of the “reparations loan” for Ukraine’s financial needs for 2026-2027.

The €90 billion loan will be drawn from €210 billion of frozen Russian assets in Europe.

Belgium, which holds around 2/3rds of the assets through its firm Euroclear, blocked an agreement in October on a €135 billion loan and has continued to hold out against confirmation. Brussels has expressed concern about its legal liability if Moscow tries to reclaim its assets, and about Russia retribution against Euroclear and other Belgian companies.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has proposed a compromise for the €90 billion loan, with the remaining €45 billion to cover Ukraine’s budget coming from EU borrowing on capital markets.

She and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz flew to Brussels last Friday for dinner with Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Wever. No details were given of the conversaton.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Pushing back the collusion between Donald Trump’s envoys and the Kremlin, Europe’s leaders have expressed firm support for Ukraine.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky met UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in London on Monday.

He then conferred by phone with counterparts in Finland, Italy, Poland, Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden, as well as the NATO Secretary General and the Presidents of the European Council and the European Commission.

The discussions came less than a week after Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — who worked with Moscow’s senior economic advisor Kirill Dmitriev on the 28-point ultimatum to Ukraine in late October — met Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.

Witkoff and Kushner then had three days of discussions with Ukrainian senior officials in Florida and a call with Zelensky. There was no movement towards an European counter-proposal, which begins with a ceasefire on current frontlines and maintains international aid for Ukraine.

Instead, Putin continued to reject a ceasefire and maintained his demand for the seizure of the rest of the strategic Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. Russia escalated drone and missile attacks across Ukraine, including on the capital Kyiv, over the weekend.

Zelensky: “Small Progress Towards Peace”

Zelensky said the London talks were “productive” and made a “small progress towards peace”: “It is important that we work together on all documents – including the overall peace framework, security guarantees, and Ukraine’s post-war recovery.

He stressed the “key priorities” of bolstered air defense, purchase of US weapons by NATO members, and energy assistance.

“I think the plan will be ready tomorrow, sometime in the evening. I think we will look at it again and send it to the US,” he told reporters.

On Monday night, he met in Brussels with the heads of the European Union and NATO.

I briefed the leaders on the situation on the diplomatic track. We discussed in detail our work with US partners on steps toward peace, security guarantees, and strengthening our resilience. We also touched on the PURL initiative [for purchase of US weapons and transfer to Ukraine by NATO members] and the reparations loan.

European Leaders Push Back Trump

While maintaining the emphasis on a US role to end Russia’s 46 1/2-month full-scale invasion, the European leaders chided the Trump Administration’s collaboration with the Kremlin.

France’s Macron said, “We all support Ukraine and peace.” He then clapped back at Trump’s insult that Zelensky “has no cards” to withstand the invasion.

“We have a lot of cards in our hands”, Macron said, citing an increasingly troubled Russian economy.

The French President later returned to the theme of encouraging Washington’s involvement behind Ukraine: “I think the main issue is the convergence between our common positions, Europeans and Ukrainians and the US to finalize these peace negotiations.”

They could then move to a “new phase” to aim to secure “the best possible conditions for Ukraine, for the Europeans and for collective security”.

Germany’s Merz was even sharper in his message towards the Trump faction threatening to abandon both Ukraine and Europe.

“These could be decisive” days “for all of us”, he noted. “We are and remain strongly behind Ukraine….The destiny of this country is the destiny of Europe.”

The Chancellor is “sceptical” about “some of the details coming in the documents from the US side”, amid the Witkoff-Kushner collusion with the Kremlin.