European leaders have announced that they will attend Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s meeting with US President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday.
The delegation includes UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.
It comes after Trump failed to achieve an agreement to stop the war in Ukraine during a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday.
The US president has now stated that he prefers a permanent peace solution over establishing a cease-fire in Ukraine.
Securing a ceasefire in Ukraine was one of Trump’s main demands prior to meeting Putin, but he later stated on social media that they “oftentimes do not hold up” and that it would be better “to go directly to a peace agreement”.
European officials have reacted cautiously to the outcome of the Trump-Putin meeting, attempting not to critique the shift in course despite their long-standing support for a ceasefire.
Putin reportedly provided Trump with a peace proposal that would compel Ukraine to withdraw from the Donetsk region of the Donbas in exchange for Russia freezing the front lines in Zaporizhzhya and Kherson.
Russia claims the Donbas as its territory, holding the majority of Luhansk and over 70% of Donetsk. It also illegally grabbed the Crimean peninsula in 2014, eight years before beginning a full-fledged invasion of Ukraine.
Ukraine’s president has already stated that he will not cede control of the Donbas, which includes the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, fearing that it may be used as a springboard for future Russian invasions.
On Sunday, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said Putin promised in Alaska that the US would deliver “robust security guarantees that I would describe as game-changing” to Ukraine.
According to Witkoff, talks in Alaska “got to an agreement that the United States and other European nations could effectively offer Article 5-like language to cover a security guarantee”.
According to Article 5 of the NATO charter, an attack on one member is considered an attack on all.
Putin opposes Ukraine joining NATO, and Witkoff suggested that this arrangement could be an option if “the Ukrainians could live with that”.
Witkoff also stated that Russia has “made some concessions at the table” over land.
He added that the Donetsk region constitutes an “important discussion” – one which he says will happen tomorrow.
Von der Leyen and Zelensky met in Brussels on Sunday. In a subsequent press conference, von der Leyen stated that any peace agreement must include security assurances for Ukraine and Europe, and that international borders cannot be changed through force.
“These are decisions to be made by Ukraine and Ukraine alone,” she said. “These decisions must not be taken without Ukraine at the table.”
Zelensky maintained that the Ukrainian constitution makes it impossible to relinquish territory to Russia and that the matter should only be discussed by Ukraine and Russia’s presidents at a trilateral summit.
The Ukrainian leader stressed the importance of a ceasefire before moving forward with a “final deal”.
The White House meeting on Monday will be Zelensky’s first since a heated public exchange in the Oval Office in February, when Trump advised him to be more “thankful” for US backing and accused him of “gambling with World War Three”.
Zelensky was subsequently asked to leave the White House.
He appeared to reconcile with Trump in April, in what the White House described as a “very productive” 15-minute encounter before attending Pope Francis’ funeral.
Ukraine has also inked a minerals contract, giving the US a financial stake in the country, and Kyiv has stated that it is willing to pay for US armaments.
However, there will be disquiet in Kyiv and other European cities following the Trump-Putin meeting on Friday.
The Russian president, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for suspected war crimes in Ukraine, stepped off his jet and onto a red carpet to be greeted cordially by Trump, who subsequently stated that they had a “fantastic relationship”.
