EPAEuropean leaders have said they will join Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at his meeting with US President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday.
It comes after Trump failed to reach a deal on ending the war in Ukraine during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday.
The US president has since said he wants to bypass securing a ceasefire in Ukraine in favour of a permanent peace agreement.
Those travelling to Washington include Sir Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, French President Emmanuel Macron, Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte.
Securing a ceasefire in Ukraine had been one of Trump’s core demands before meeting Putin, but he afterwards posted on social media that they “often times do not hold up” and that it would be better “to go directly to a peace agreement”.
European leaders have reacted with caution to the outcome of the Trump-Putin meeting, seeking not to criticise the change of direction despite their long-held support for a ceasefire.
Putin reportedly presented Trump with a peace offer that would require Ukraine withdrawing from the Donetsk region of the Donbas, in return for Russia freezing the front lines in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
Russia claims the Donbas as Russian territory, controlling most of Luhansk and about 70% of Donetsk. It also illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014, eight years before launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Ukraine’s president has previously ruled out ceding control of the Donbas – composed of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions – saying it could be used as a springboard for future Russian attacks.
On Sunday, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said Putin had agreed in Alaska that the US would provide Ukraine with “robust security guarantees that I would describe as game changing”.
Witkoff told CNN that 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”.
Nato’s Article 5 states that an attack on one member is considered an attack on all.
Putin opposes Ukraine joining Nato, and Witkoff said this arrangement could be an alternative if “the Ukrainians could live with that”.
Witkoff also said Russia had “made some concessions at the table” about territory.
He added that the Donetsk region constitutes an “important discussion” – one which he says will happen tomorrow.
The ‘s US partner CBS cited diplomatic sources as saying that European officials were concerned Trump may try to press Zelensky to agree to the terms discussed with Russia in Alaska.
Von der Leyen met Zelensky in Brussels on Sunday. In a press conference after, she said that any peace deal must include security guarantees for Ukraine and Europe, and that international borders could not be changed by force.
“These are decisions to be made by Ukraine and Ukraine alone,” she said. “These decisions must not be taken without Ukraine in the table.”
Zelensky reiterated that the Ukrainian constitution makes it impossible to concede territory to Russia and that the issue should only be discussed by the leaders of Ukraine and Russia at a trilateral summit.
The Ukrainian leader reiterated the need for a ceasefire before working quickly on a “final deal”.
Monday’s White House meeting will be Zelensky’s first since an acrimonious public exchange in the Oval Office in February, when Trump told him to be more “thankful” for US support and accused him of “gambling with World War Three”.
Zelensky was then told 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 meeting before they attended Pope Francis’s funeral.
Ukraine has also signed a minerals deal that gave the US a financial stake in the country, and Kyiv made it clear they were willing to pay for US arms.
But there will have been concern in Kyiv and other European capitals following the Trump-Putin meeting on Friday.
The Russian president, who is facing an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for alleged war crimes in Ukraine, stepped off his jet and onto a red carpet to be warmly received by Trump, who later said they had a “fantastic relationship”.
