Russia must agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine before negotiations can advance toward a formal peace agreement, top European leaders told Donald Trump at the White House on Monday, urging the U.S. president to “put pressure on Russia” in his push to end the war.
The meeting had a historic flair with six European heads of government, the NATO secretary general and the president of the European Commission all converging on Washington for discussions with the president — a flurry of diplomatic activity after Trump’s summit last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska sparked widespread fears over the fate of U.S. support for security on the continent.
Trump first met with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in the Oval Office, striking an affable tone after their last, disastrous meeting in the room in February. This time, Trump emphasized his “love” for the Ukrainian people and his commitment to provide security guarantees for Kyiv in an ultimate peace settlement with Russia.
Zelensky offered only praise and gratitude to Trump, telling reporters that they had their “best” meeting yet.
But an expanded meeting with Zelensky and the chancellor of Germany, the presidents of France and Finland, the prime ministers of the United Kingdom and Italy, and the heads of NATO and the European Commission hinted at a more challenging road ahead for the burgeoning peace effort.
“The next steps ahead are the more complicated ones now,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said. “The path is open — you opened it, but now the way is open for complicated negotiations, and to be honest, we would all like to see a ceasefire, at the latest, from the next meeting on.”
“I can’t imagine the next meeting would take place without a ceasefire,” Merz added. “So let’s work on that. And let’s put pressure on Russia.”
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, sat sternly throughout the start of the meeting before echoing Merz’s call.
“Your idea to ask for a truce, a ceasefire, or at least to stop the killings,” Macron said, “is a necessity, and we all support this idea.”
Trump had been in agreement with his European counterparts on the necessity of a ceasefire for months. Zelensky first agreed to one in March. But Putin has refused, pressing Russian advantages on the battlefield, and in Anchorage on Friday, he convinced Trump to drop his calls for an immediate halt to the fighting.
“All of us would obviously prefer an immediate ceasefire while we work on a lasting peace. Maybe something like that could happen — as of this moment, it’s not happening,” Trump said at the meeting. “But President Zelensky and President Putin can talk a little bit more about that.”
“I don’t know that it’s necessary,” Trump added. “You can do it through the war. But I like the ceasefire from another standpoint — you immediately stop the killing.”
The European leaders all emphasized to Trump that they share his desire for peace. But the president of the commission, Ursula von der Leyen, called for a “just” peace, and Zelensky would not engage publicly with reporters on Putin’s central demand: a surrender of vast swaths of Ukrainian territory to Russian control.
Putin first invaded Ukraine in 2014, occupying the Crimean peninsula in a stealth operation and funding an attack on the eastern region of Donbas using proxy forces. But he launched a full-scale invasion of the entire country in 2022, leading to the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II.
In a hot mic moment, before the media were ushered out of the expanded meeting with European leaders, Trump told Macron that he believes the Russian president and former KGB officer would agree to a peace deal because of their personal relationship.
He “wants to make a deal for me,” he said, “as crazy as it sounds.”
‘Article 5-like’ guarantees
European leaders said that detailed U.S. security guarantees — for Ukraine specifically, and more broadly for Europe — were at the top of the agenda for Monday’s meetings, including the prospect of U.S. troops on the ground in Ukraine to enforce any future peace settlement.
Asked whether U.S. forces would be involved, Trump did not rule it out, stating, “We’ll be talking about that.”
“When it comes to security, there’s going to be a lot of help,” he said in the Oval Office. “It’s going to be good. They are first line of defense, because they’re there — they are Europe. But we’re going to help them out, also. We’ll be involved.”
Von der Leyen, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer praised the Trump administration for discussing what it called “Article 5-like” security guarantees for Ukraine, referencing a provision of the North Atlantic Treaty Organizaton charter that states that an attack on one member is an attack on all.
But the provision also provides countries in the alliance with broad discretion on whether to participate in a military response to an attack on a fellow member.
Starmer and Macron have expressed a willingness for months to send British and French troops to Ukraine. But the Russian Foreign Ministry said Monday that Moscow would oppose the deployment of NATO troops to the country as “provocative” and “reckless,” creating a potential rift in the negotiations.
Despite the gulf between Europe and Russia, Trump expressed hope throughout the day that he could schedule a trilateral meeting with Putin and Zelensky, possibly within a matter of days. He planned on calling Putin shortly after European leaders left the White House, he told reporters.
Trump’s team floated inviting Zelensky to attend the negotiations in Alaska on Friday, and Zelensky has said he is willing to participate in a trilateral meeting. He repeated his interest to Trump on Monday and asked him to attend.
But Moscow has yet to commit to a trilateral summit. Ahead of Friday’s meeting, Russian officials said that conditions weren’t right for a direct talks between Putin and the Ukrainian president. The Russian leader has repeatedly questioned Zelensky’s legitimacy and has tried to have him assassinated on numerous occasions.
Quiet on territorial ‘swaps’
In the Oval Office, a Fox News reporter asked Zelensky whether he was “prepared to keep sending Ukrainian troops to their deaths,” or whether he would “agree to redraw the maps” instead. The Ukrainian president demurred.
“We live under each day attacks,” Zelensky responded. “We need to stop this war, to stop Russia. And we need the support — American and European partners.”
Trump and his team largely adopted Putin’s position Friday that Russia should be able to keep the Ukrainian territory it has occupied by force — and possibly even more of Donetsk, which is part of the Donbas region and remains in Ukrainian control — in exchange for an end to the fighting. But European officials were silent on the idea on Monday.
The Ukrainian Constitution prohibits the concession of territory without the support of a public referendum, and polls indicate that 3 in 4 Ukrainians oppose giving up land in an attempt to end the war.
Steve Witkoff, the president’s envoy for special missions, said Sunday that Putin agreed to pass legislation through the Kremlin that would guarantee an end to wars of conquest in Ukraine, or elsewhere in Europe.
But Russia has made similar commitments before.
In 1994, the United States and Britain signed on to a agreement in Budapest with Ukraine and Russia that ostensibly guaranteed security for Kyiv and vowed to honor Ukraine’s territorial integrity. In exchange, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons.
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