Lithuanian FM hopes for concrete decisions from leaders' Paris meeting

VILNIUS - Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys hopes that concrete decisions will be made at the European leaders' meeting in Paris on Monday.

"I very much hope that the leaders will come out with decisions and not just share what they discussed and how united we are," the minister told the M-1 news service on Monday. "Decisions have to be put on the table."

As BNS reported earlier, the Paris meeting, which comes ahead of the third anniversary of Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine, will be attended by the leaders of the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark.

The meeting is held after US President Donald Trump and Russia had their first direct phone call last week and discussed the ending of the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Budrys confirmed that Denmark would represent the Baltic and other Nordic countries at the meeting.

"Our position was that the Nordic and Baltic countries should be represented because they are the second largest providers of security and defense assistance to Ukraine after the United States," Lithuania's top diplomat said.

As Denmark chairs the Nordic-Baltic Group (NB8) this year and will hold the rotating EU presidency in the second half of this year, it was decided that Copenhagen would be the best to represent NB8 interests, Budrys explained.

"It is only natural that the Danish prime minister will be at the table to represent our interests properly. (...) Denmark has a really big role to play, both in Northern Europe and in Europe as a whole," he said.

The NB8 group includes Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Finland and Sweden.

The Paris meeting will also be attended by President of the European Council Antonio Costa, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

Having met in Paris last week, the French, German and Spanish foreign ministers insisted that any peace agreement in Ukraine could not be achieved without the involvement of Kyiv and its European partners.