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The EU should take advantage of “momentum” around peace talks in Ukraine and push ahead with nascent efforts to reopen negotiations with Vladimir Putin, Austria’s chancellor has said.
Brussels in recent weeks has opened communication channels with the Kremlin to explore potential talks with the Russian president, a move that Christian Stocker told the FT he “supports very much” and would urge his fellow EU leaders to get behind.
“I agree with that totally. Wars end not with weapons, but with successful diplomacy. And for diplomacy to be successful, you need conversations, you need negotiations, and those channels need to be opened first,” Stocker said in an interview.
“There is momentum now,” Stocker said of peace talks, citing the ceasefire in Iran which for months had seemingly distracted US President Donald Trump and his team from the war in Ukraine. “The situation in the Middle East . . . I am a little bit optimistic that if there we find a solution, the focus will shift to Ukraine.
US-led negotiations to end Russia’s more than four-year-long war against Ukraine have stalled, prompting European capitals to debate the benefits of attempting to break the deadlock. But many leaders are deeply sceptical and argue that the EU should instead increase support to Ukraine and force battlefield losses on Putin to bring him to negotiations.
Stocker declined to comment on who Europe could appoint to potentially speak on its behalf to Putin, but said EU leaders must engage in serious conversations on what that person would say.
“More important than the who is the what they will talk about,” he said. “I would not know whether [EU leaders] all are in the same position already.
“But there is one position where we always had as a common position: that we are not supporting Ukraine to be able to fight an endless war,” Stocker added. “The result needs to be a . . . just and lasting peace.”
Pedro Lourtie, chief of staff to EU Council president António Costa, held telephone calls with a senior official close to Putin in recent weeks, in what an EU official said were “brief contacts . . . to open communication channels”.
Stocker will attend a summit of EU leaders chaired by Costa in Brussels on Thursday evening where Ukraine will be discussed. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who will address the summit, has endorsed the concept of Europe attempting to open up channels to the Kremlin.
But EU diplomats expect pushback from leaders sceptical of outreach, particularly those in Europe’s north and east. One senior diplomat involved in the summit preparations described Costa’s efforts as “simply delusional”.
Capitals wary of engaging with Putin also point to his insistence on pursuing his hardline goals in the conflict even as Moscow’s war effort sputters.
Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy adviser, dismissed a French pitch for greater European involvement in peace talks at a Moscow meeting in February. Russia says it remains open to talks but implied it expects Putin’s demands to remain the starting point.
Ushakov told state television that Russia still had the upper hand on the frontline. “The Europeans are clearly insisting that the war must go on. They are under the completely incorrect and false impression that the situation on the battlefield is supposedly changing in favour of the Ukrainian forces, which is categorically incorrect.”
Stocker, however, said, “Putin must see clearly that it is in his interest to start negotiations. That he will achieve more at the negotiation table than on the battlefield,” adding: “It is not up to us. Putin is the one who must take the first step.”
Under Stocker, who was sworn into office in March 2025 as part of a three-party coalition, one of the most notable shifts has been a rethink of the country’s longstanding assumptions about neutrality. “Neutrality doesn’t protect,” he said. “The world changed, the challenge has changed.
“We need to be more prepared . . . for defending ourselves. Austria will not be a blind spot in Europe [where] defence is concerned,” Stocker said.
Austria has joined the Franco-British-led “Coalition of the Willing” in support of Kyiv, in what Stocker describes as an “active observer” role. That involves participating in discussions on support for Ukraine and future European security arrangements while remaining outside any potential troop deployments.
The Austrian people must understand that “we need to strengthen our armed forces, we need to strengthen our capabilities in matters of defence,” he said.
