Kallas Urges New US Congress to Keep Backing Ukraine and Press Moscow

Kaja Kallas didn't waste time. The EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs said Wednesday that American voters had made their choice clear, weighing in on a midterm election that flipped Congress to the Democrats. Her message to Washington: keep backing Ukraine, and lean harder on Moscow.

Kallas framed unity as the whole point. Allies, she said, will be much stronger if they stand together and send one clear message to Russia. With Democrats now holding both the Senate and the House, she's hoping the new Congress keeps the support flowing to Kyiv — and turns up the heat on the Kremlin.

The Kremlin is already looking ahead. Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that the first trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine and the United States will center on security, with the sit-down set for November 10 and 11 in Abu Dhabi. Details will be hashed out behind closed doors, Peskov told reporters, and the makeup of Russia's delegation will be announced in timely fashion.

Reactions rolled in from every direction. Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said on X that the American people had sent a clear message, tying the election result to Washington's posture toward Tehran and blasting what he called an unlawful and atrocious war driven by arrogance and miscalculation. He warned that more aggression would only deepen Washington's defeat.

In Antigua and Barbuda, UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham called the Republican rout a possible opportunity for the world to tackle the cost of living, speaking to reporters from the Commonwealth summit. Without a resolution to the war against Iran and the Ukraine crisis, he said, he can't get people's cost of living pressures down. Voters, he added, want to see the world coming together on what matters to them.

Markets felt the shift too. Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group sank as much as 11% in premarket trading Wednesday after President Donald Trump's Republican Party took a heavy beating at the polls, handing Democrats control of both chambers for the first time under a Republican president in nearly two decades. Some Republican representatives pointed the finger at Trump himself, blaming his political style and rhetoric for the scale of the losses.