European leaders tell Russia security architecture is theirs to decide

European leaders opened a summit in Dublin on Thursday with a message for Moscow: the continent's security architecture is for Europeans to decide. French President Emmanuel Macron told the assembled leaders that Europeans will define and decide their own future security. The declaration answers a demand Russia has placed at the top of its priorities in the Ukraine peace talks.

The setting explains the urgency. The last round of talks in Abu Dhabi included senior officials from France, Germany, Britain, Italy, the European Commission, the European Council and Nato. None of them interacted with the Russian team during the round, Euronews reports — two delegations shared a process without exchanging a word. Moscow's delegation rejected a multilateral format for the negotiations outright, and the rounds have been run through American envoys, with European governments encountering the parameters as they were set rather than as they were negotiated.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz urged Russia to engage face-to-face with European representatives, insisting that Ukraine, Europeans, Americans and Russia must all sit at the table. Macron went further, telling the summit that Europe must now articulate a concrete vision for its own peace plan and future security arrangements — an acknowledgment that no such written vision currently exists. The same governments represented in Abu Dhabi are now asserting a say over the settlement's central question from a different city.

Russia, for its part, wants to negotiate the architecture itself: the guarantees, troop positions and alliance arrangements that have organised the continent since the Cold War. Moscow prefers to settle those questions with Washington directly. Europe's response is a declaration of ownership, issued at a summit in Dublin, over negotiations conducted in Abu Dhabi and shaped in Washington.

Merz says four parties must sit at the table. Moscow's delegation has already rejected the multilateral format that would seat them.