After a contentious White House meeting on Friday between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, European leaders restated their support on Tuesday for an immediate cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine at current battle lines.
Russia also stalled plans for meeting with U.S. officials, undercutting any hopes for progress toward a pause in fighting.
The Europeans couched their backing for Ukraine’s position in terms that praised Mr. Trump, a tactic they frequently employ.
“We strongly support President Trump’s position that the fighting should stop immediately, and that the current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations,” the statement said. It was signed by 11 European leaders, including from Britain, Finland, France, Germany and the European Union, as well as by Mr. Zelensky.
Russia’s position has not changed. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia demands that before any cease-fire, Ukraine surrender the parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions that Russian troops do not already occupy. That represents almost 2 percent of Ukraine’s territory, twice the amount that Russia has been able to gain for itself in the last two years of war.
Mr. Zelensky has refused to surrender that territory, a position he repeated in the Friday meeting with Mr. Trump. A day earlier, Mr. Putin called Mr. Trump to repeat his own position and warn him against giving Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine, said a senior European official who asked for anonymity given the sensitivity of the topic.
Mr. Trump, apparently eager to build on his success in obtaining a Gaza cease-fire, pressed Mr. Zelensky to hand over the territory as Mr. Putin demanded to end the bloodshed. In the end, he accepted Mr. Zelensky’s refusal to do so, said the official, who has direct knowledge of the phone call Mr. Zelensky placed to European leaders just after he left the White House.
Mr. Zelensky told the Europeans that Mr. Trump demanded territorial concessions, as he had done before the Alaska summit in August with Mr. Putin, but did not insist on them, while warning that Russia was a larger country and might defeat Ukraine if there was no settlement. Mr. Zelensky insisted that Ukraine was holding its own. Mr. Trump offered no Tomahawks.
Friday’s conversation was bad for the Ukrainian and European position but not nearly as bad as the Alaska meeting, the official said. And in the end, the official pointed out, Mr. Trump did not insist on Ukrainian concessions, so little seemed to have changed.
In fact, Mr. Trump described the meeting as cordial and denied that he had demanded territorial concessions from Ukraine. “Enough blood has been shed, with property lines being defined by War and Guts,” Trump said on social media. “They should stop where they are.”
Mr. Trump underscored that position on Sunday. “We think that what they should do is just stop at the lines where they are, the battle lines,” he told reporters on Air Force One. “The rest is very tough to negotiate if you’re going to say, ‘You take this, we take that.’”
Mr. Zelensky chose to describe the Trump meeting publicly as positive. “After many rounds of discussion over more than two hours with him and his team, his message, in my view, is positive: that we stand where we stand on the front line,” he said on Sunday.
An E.U. diplomat briefed on a meeting with a Ukrainian official said that while there was no progress made in the Trump-Zelensky meeting, there was no backsliding either.
In the end, it changed little and “triggered a profound sense of déjà vu,” said Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London. The only result was the suggestion of another summit between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin at some point in Budapest, which would be prepared by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov.
But on Tuesday, Moscow put off the Rubio-Lavrov meeting, saying that even their preparatory discussion must be further prepared. “We need preparation, serious preparation,” said Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman. “This may take time. That’s why, in fact, no exact dates were initially set” for any meeting.
One key difference between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin remained, Mr. Freedman noted, with Mr. Trump demanding a cease-fire before any political settlement and Mr. Putin demanding a settlement first.
With the front lines disputed, even negotiating a cease-fire would be complicated, Mr. Freedman said.
Mr. Trump suggested to Mr. Zelensky that Budapest might be a three-way affair, with Mr. Trump shuttling between the Ukrainian and Russian leaders. But nothing was fixed, Mr. Zelensky told the Europeans.
Though he has threatened to increase pressure on Mr. Putin to agree to a cease-fire, Mr. Trump has not done so. Ukrainian and other European officials, however, believe that only U.S. pressure will convince Mr. Putin that continuing the war is against his interests.
“We must ramp up the pressure on Russia’s economy and its defense industry, until Putin is ready to make peace,” the Europeans said in Tuesday’s statement, while promising to continue supporting Ukraine.
Jeanna Smialek contributed reporting from Brussels.
Steven Erlanger is the chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe and is based in Berlin. He has reported from over 120 countries, including Thailand, France, Israel, Germany and the former Soviet Union.
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