Russian President Vladimir Putin pushed back at prospects for European leaders to help negotiate an end to his war in Ukraine, dismissing them as mediators and pointedly insisting on a peace deal he said had been worked out with Donald Trump in Alaska. “How can the European Union or individual EU countries serve as mediators when they are directly assisting the country with which we are in an armed conflict?” Putin said at a meeting with foreign media in St. Petersburg late Thursday. “How can they be mediators? Mediation implies neutrality.” Officials from Europe’s three biggest economies — Germany, France and the UK ... (full story)