With Putin 'stalling' peace talks, NATO minister says US has 'powerful leverage'
- - With Putin 'stalling' peace talks, NATO minister says US has 'powerful leverage'
DAVID BRENNANAugust 28, 2025 at 11:00 PM
With Putin 'stalling' peace talks, NATO minister says US has 'powerful leverage'
On NATO's eastern edge, leaders of the Baltic nations have long considered themselves more awake to the threat from Moscow than their allies to the west, a collective memory of Russian and Soviet occupation seared into their national narratives.
"We know that Russia is going to move forward," Lithuanian Defense Minister Dovile Sakaliene told ABC News during her visit to Kyiv last weekend. "We in Lithuania, we remember very well. So, that means that we have to prepare ourselves."
"This terrible threat is also an opportunity for us to grow the muscle where we need it to be," Sakaliene added.
Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine from February 2022 served as vindication for NATO's eastern-most nations, who for years had been warning their Western allies that Moscow could not be a reliable partner.
With President Donald Trump now seeking to press Moscow and Ukraine into a peace deal, Sakaliene said the West should focus on Russian President Vladimir Putin's actions rather than his words.
Jae C. Hong/AP - PHOTO: President Donald Trump shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, on Aug. 15, 2025.
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"I don't want to sound pessimistic, but this is an ongoing process, which, again, in my opinion, is severely complicated by the fact that Putin keeps bombing, that Putin keeps annihilating Ukraine," Sakaliene said.
"When he talks about peace, it's not even funny -- it's just absurd," she continued. "He is now playing the game of pretending to be participating in talks, of having a dialogue, while at the same time he's moving full speed forward."
"This stalling of our additional sanctions, of additional pressure, simply gives him room for further military actions in Ukraine," Sakaliene said.
Trump presses Putin on peace
Putin and his top officials have claimed willingness to make a deal, though have demanded the freezing of the current front lines and Ukraine's withdrawal from key battlefields including those in Donetsk Oblast in the east of the country.
Moscow also wants Ukraine permanently barred from NATO membership, opposes the deployment of any Western troops to the country as part of any future security guarantees and wants all international sanctions lifted.
The shape of the intended security guarantees is still being forged. Trump has committed some level of American involvement, though also this month ruled out deploying U.S. troops to Ukraine.
Following the Aug. 15 summit between Trump and Putin in Alaska, Trump appeared to have dropped his demand for a full ceasefire before peace negotiations. Ukraine and its European backers maintain that no terms can be agreed to while the fighting is ongoing.
"I think that we are moving forward, but slowly," Sakaliene said.
Lithuanian Defense Ministry - PHOTO: Lithuanian Defense Minister Dovile Sakaliene and Ukrainian Defense Minister Denys Shmyhal are pictured during a meeting in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Aug. 25, 2025.
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"The killing has not stopped and it doesn't really matter what term we use, the war is actively ongoing," Sakaliene said when asked about the shape of any peace deal. "That means that talking about any security guarantees during the full-scale invasion -- which is going on in a full-blown capacity -- is not possible."
Sakaliene said she was encouraged by Trump's recent social media post suggesting that his predecessor, President Joe Biden, should have allowed Ukraine "to play offensive" by striking deep within Russia. "I agree wholeheartedly," she said.
When asked if she thought Trump would greenlight such strikes, the minister replied, "We may hope."
"All the patience and wish for diplomacy" so far demonstrated by Trump, she continued, "was not met with any goodwill from the other side. Russia has not demonstrated a single millimeter of goodwill."
Trump this week again expressed his frustration with Russia's continued long-range strikes on Ukraine, and again hinted at consequences "over the next week or two" if Moscow failed to make moves towards peace.
The president did not say what those consequences might be, though he has previously threatened more sanctions and secondary tariffs on customers of Russian energy exports. The White House has imposed an additional 25% tariff on Indian goods related to New Delhi's continued purchases of Russian military equipment and energy goods.
"The United States has very powerful leverage," Sakaliene said. Secondary sanctions, she added, could have "nuclear effects and we'd love to see them," along with permission to "use whatever weapons to whatever targets" necessary to help Ukraine on the battlefield.
Those two measures are "the only tangible motivation for Putin to sit at the negotiation table," Sakaliene said.
'America First'
The Trump administration has made clear that Europeans -- not Americans -- will be expected to shoulder most of the burden of any future security guarantees for Ukraine. More broadly, Trump has long demanded that Europeans do, and pay, more to protect their own continent.
"We are going to do even more," Sakaliene said, noting the recent agreement of NATO nations to raise the collective defense spending target to 5% of GDP. But the U.S., she said, will remain a key security partner and guarantor, regardless of Europe's efforts to achieve greater self-reliance.
"When we talk about certain capabilities, let's be honest, for at least a decade in certain areas, the United States is going to remain the 'influencer,' the main capability guarantor," she said.
"Do you really want to lose the United States as the dominant power in security architecture globally?" Sakaliene asked. Without "a very clear dominance of the United States, then we have a dogfight," she said.
"Then we have probably a very dangerous shift, a very dangerous shakedown of this current structure of power," Sakaliene said. "I don't think anybody's going to like it. China is already trying to become number one."
Lithuanian Defense Ministry - PHOTO: Ukrainian officials meet with NATO counterparts at an undisclosed location in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Aug. 25, 2028.
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Europeans have already committed to buying more weapons from the U.S., both for themselves and for Ukraine. Indeed, arms sales have become a key metric of success for Trump.
Sakaliene said that both sides of the Atlantic will need each other in a coming era of great power competition.
"Regretfully, the level of our need is so much higher than the current level of supply," she said of military resources. "And regretfully, this decade of wars is not over."
Sakaliene traveled to Washington, D.C., in July with other Baltic defense ministers to meet with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. There, she said, the Baltic officials were assured that American forces are not about to abandon their allies.
"The United States is not leaving," she said. "As they said, 'The United States first, but the United States not alone'."
For all the talk of America's pivot to face down the China challenge in the Indo-Pacific, Sakaliene -- who was sanctioned by Beijing after the European Union imposed sanctions on China over its policies in Xinjiang -- suggested that different theaters cannot be so easily separated.
"Even though sometimes it seems that we can draw red lines on the map -- this is the Indo-Pacific, this is Europe, this is the Middle East -- that's not how it works," she said.
A secure and peaceful Europe would be a vital ally for the U.S. in any future conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific, Sakaliene said. Continued conflict with Russia on the continent, though, may hamstring Europeans and undermine a united Western front in Asia.
"This world has become as small as ever," she said. "Joint coordinated actions by Russia and China and their smaller evil allies -- this is what we are facing right now, and this is the main challenge of this decade, in my opinion."
Picture Alliance/dpa/picture alliance via Getty I - PHOTO: A German Leopard 2 main battle tank takes part in the Quadriga 2024 NATO exercise at the Paprade military training area in Lithuania on May 29, 2024.
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On the Baltic front
The Baltic region, Sakaliene suggested, can offer valuable lessons to the U.S. and its fellow NATO allies for the conflicts of the future.
"See the bigger picture," she said when asked what lessons she wants to impart to her NATO counterparts. "I've had some very useful meetings with my colleagues from the Indo-Pacific and the problems that we see in the Baltics are very similar to what the Philippines, or Singapore, or Japan -- or of course, Taiwan -- see."
The use of shadow fleets to evade sanctions, attacks on underwater critical infrastructure, cyber attacks and electronic warfare -- most prominently the use of GPS jamming and spoofing technologies -- have all become commonplace in the Baltic Sea. Such tactics could also become more visible and common in the waters of the Indo-Pacific in years to come, Sakaliene said.
For now, she suggested, the capacity of Europe's military industry still lags far behind its civil industry. Western allies need to produce quality technology at great speed and in greater mass, Sakaliene said, potentially aided by combining civil and military capacities.
"Technologies do evolve," she said. "We really have to speed it up."
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Source: “AOL AOL Politics”
