European foreign ministers are holding emergency talks to discuss their next steps before a meeting between United States President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, as Europe fears Ukraine will be excluded and forced into unacceptable territorial compromises to end the Russia-Ukraine war, now in its fourth year.In a pre-US-Russia summit push aimed at consensus, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz invited Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the NATO secretary general and several European leaders to a virtual meeting on Wednesday.Trump later on Monday said that his meeting with Putin will be a “feel-out meeting” aimed at ending the war. “So I’m going in to speak to Vladimir Putin, and I’m going to be telling him, you’ve got to end this war. You’ve got to end it,” Trump told reporters. Trump also said a future meeting could include Zelenskyy.The European Union’s top diplomats held a meeting by video link on Monday with their Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Sybiha.“The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine,” leaders from France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Britain and Finland, and EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said in a joint statement ahead of the call.Zelenskyy said on Monday that concessions to Moscow would not persuade it to stop fighting and that there was a need to ramp up pressure on the Kremlin. “Concessions …
