Invitation to Alaska table only for those who call the shots

Amid growing concerns that neither the European Union nor Ukraine will be represented in the talks that Washington and Moscow are holding in Alaska on Friday, the EU has intensified diplomatic efforts to avoid such a scenario.

But the EU should know that even if it and Ukraine are invited, they lack the necessary means to steer the negotiations in the direction they seek — that the integrity of Ukraine's sovereignty and territory must not be compromised for peace.

This is not the first time the EU seems worried it will be kept out of negotiations to end the conflict in Europe in which it has provided tremendous support to one of the two conflicting parties.

The EU had been largely kept in the dark while Ukraine was pressed to sign a mineral resource agreement with the US in April. The arrangement grants the US access to the East European country's vast mineral resources; in return Washington has promised Kyiv that the US will not scale back its military support.

Although the EU has paid for a hefty share of the US' military aid to Ukraine, the US side apparently regards it as the bloc's obligation for its own security. Even though the US admits the Ukraine crisis is Europe's business, it doesn't agree with the EU that its huge input in Ukraine naturally entitles it to a seat at the negotiation table — something the EU takes for granted.

The reason why the planned talks in Alaska between the US and Russian leaders has caught wide attention is because the international community, including the EU and Ukraine, is well aware that how the Ukraine crisis evolves will not depend on Brussels or Kyiv, but on Washington and Moscow.

All this happens after most EU members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization agreed to raise their defense spending from 2 percent of their GDP to 5 percent so that they can set aside more funds to buy weapons from the US for their own security.

Although Europe overtook the US as the biggest supplier of aid to Ukraine in June, with about €72 billion ($83.95 billion) in military aid compared with the US' €65 billion, according to the Kiel Institute's Ukraine Support Tracker, it is the US that has supplied the most sophisticated and lethal equipment, and much of Europe's aid finances the purchase of US-made weapons, underscoring its dependence on the country.

In an interview with US media, aired on Friday, US Vice-President JD Vance said that Americans are sick of continuing to spend their money, their tax dollars, on the Ukraine conflict "but if the Europeans want to step up and actually buy the weapons from American producers we're OK with that, but we're not going to fund it ourselves anymore".

Vance and UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy hosted a meeting of security officials near London on Saturday to discuss the Ukraine crisis. The talks are said to have been called at the request of the US. Senior Ukrainian officials attended the talks along with officials representing the EU, France, Germany, Italy, Finland and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

It is clear the US administration took advantage of this meeting to link invitations to the Alaska talks to other commitments from relevant parties, particularly those from the EU.

That also explains why the EU's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said following the Vance-Lammy meeting that she planned to convene an extraordinary meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday, presumably to discuss Vance's latest offer.

As The Times commented in a report on Vance urging Europe to "step up" in Ukraine, European diplomatic efforts are significant but risk being merely symbolic without military backing, and the ability to uphold Ukraine's territorial integrity ultimately depends on sustained US commitment to weapons, troops and political will.