European Leaders Will Join Zelenskiy For Key Meeting With Trump

European leaders will join Volodymyr Zelenskiy at his high-stakes meeting with Donald Trump on Monday in Washington, a show of support as Ukraine’s leader faces growing US pressure to agree to a quick peace deal with Russia that involves ceding swaths of territory.  

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron have confirmed their participation. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni will join the talks as well, according to Sky. 

The move comes as European nations shift their focus toward providing Ukraine with robust security guarantees that will be discussed during a video call of the so-called coalition-of-the-willing countries on Sunday afternoon. 

Trump said after his talks with Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday that he’ll urge Zelenskiy to make a quick deal, and sounded receptive to the Russian president’s demands that Ukraine give up large areas of land in the east of the country. European official are skeptical that a peace agreement can be rapidly reached, and that Putin even wants one.

Von der Leyen said in a post on X that she’ll host Zelenskiy in Brussels on Sunday afternoon before joining him, Trump and other European leaders at the White House meeting. 

Monday’s talks will include, among other things, security guarantees, territorial issues, and continued support for Ukraine in its defense against Russian aggression, according to a German statement. 

It will be Zelenskiy’s first visit in the White House since February, when his Oval Office encounter with Trump turned into a public shouting match and led to US briefly pausing military aid to Ukraine. 

While the two leaders patched up their relationship since then, the Ukrainian president needs all the support he can muster as the US president presses for a fast peace deal, and Putin sticks to his maximalist demands.

Trump told European leaders on a call Saturday, following his talks with Putin in Alaska, that he was prepared to contribute to security guarantees with Europe so long as it didn’t involve NATO, Bloomberg reported earlier. The US president suggested Putin would be OK with such an arrangement, people familiar with the matter said. The Kremlin hasn’t commented. 

Trump also indicated he could be looking to organize a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders as early as within a week, the people said.

Zelenskiy has said repeatedly that he’s willing to meet Putin. The Kremlin has yet to provide a similar commitment, and many European officials doubt he wants to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is halfway through its fourth year. 

The topic of a trilateral summit wasn’t raised during the meetings in Alaska, Russia’s state TV channel Vesti reported on Saturday, citing Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov.

The specifics of a US contribution to any security guarantees for Ukraine are unclear. The discussions have touched upon the possibility of granting Kyiv assurances from some allies — similar to those of NATO’s Article 5 collective defense clause — which commits members to defend each other if attacked, said the people.

The people spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations, and cautioned that a NATO-like mechanism would be difficult. An alternative would be bolstering, through US commitments, earlier plans coordinated by the UK and France, which included reassurance forces, monitoring and air-cover, the people said.

Ahead of his meeting with Putin, the US president told allies that reaching a ceasefire would be his key demand. He also threatened to walk out of the talks and impose tough new punitive measures on Moscow and countries buying its oil if it wasn’t met. Yet Trump signaled on Friday that he wasn’t in a rush to implement fresh penalties on Russia’s trading partners.

Following his calls with Zelenskiy and European leaders early Saturday, Trump said in a Truth Social post that it had been “determined by all” that the best way to end the war was to achieve a peace dal and “not a mere Ceasefire Agreement.” Most statements issued by European leaders on Saturday made no mention of a ceasefire.

Trump told Zelenskiy and European leaders that Putin wants Ukraine to cede control of the entire Donbas region in Ukraine’s east, renewing earlier demands, Bloomberg previously reported.

Zelenskiy has repeatedly ruled out giving up all of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, which comprise Donbas. Moscow’s forces only partially control the region and have failed to take it militarily after more than a decade of fighting. 

Russia would also halt advancing its claims over the parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions it doesn’t now control, effectively freezing the battle lines there. The Kremlin could also potentially withdraw troops from other regions such as Sumy and Kharkiv in Ukraine’s northeast, areas near the Russian border where Kremlin forces control only small pockets of land.

According to an assessment by the UK defense ministry, it would take Russia more than four years to fully occupy the four Ukrainian regions it laid claim to in 2022. That would come at a cost of nearly 2 million additional Russian casualties based on current battlefield advances, the ministry said on X.

While maintaining that any territorial decisions are for Zelenskiy to make, Trump has repeatedly signaled that a peace agreement would include land swaps, and has urged the Ukrainian president to make a deal. Many European officials are skeptical that a detailed agreement can be reached quickly.

Russia’s rejection of repeated calls for a ceasefire “complicates the situation,” Zelenskiy said in a social media post late on Saturday. “If they lack the will to carry out a simple order to stop the strikes, it may take a lot of effort to get Russia to have the will to implement far greater – peaceful coexistence with its neighbors for decades.”