A handful of European leaders are in Washington, D.C., to participate in the conversations between Presidents Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky about how to move forward in the joint effort to end the war in Ukraine.
They are there at least in part to ensure the conversation between Trump and Zelensky does not resemble the disastrous Feb. 28 meeting between them in which the two leaders got into a public argument in the Oval Office that ended with the White House asking him and his delegation to leave before signing the agreement that prompted the visit.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are all in Washington on Monday for meetings with Zelensky and Trump.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio denied over the weekend that the European leaders are coming to ensure Zelensky is not pressured into agreeing to a deal he does not want to support for his country.
“This is such a stupid media narrative that they’re coming here tomorrow because Trump is going to bully Zelensky into a bad deal,” Rubio said on Face the Nation. “We’ve been working with these people for weeks — for weeks — on this stuff. They’re coming here tomorrow because they chose to come here tomorrow. We invited them to come. We invited them to come. The president invited them to come.“
At the same time, Trump has placed the onus on Zelensky to get a deal done following his meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday.
Trump said on Truth Social on Sunday that Zelensky “can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight.” He quashed two of Zelensky’s biggest ambitions: freeing Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, and joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“No getting back [former President Barack] Obama given Crimea (12 years ago, without a shot being fired!), and NO GOING INTO NATO BY UKRAINE,” the president continued. “Some things never change!!!”
The president has said a negotiated end to the war would likely mean “land swaps,” or the redrawing of borders, and he noted he would try to get both sides to make concessions.
Russian leaders have refused to give up any territory the country currently holds in Ukraine, and have said in negotiations they want more territory that they haven’t been able to capture militarily. Zelensky has said Ukraine would not support giving up territory.
The president and his administration have repeatedly pressed Europe to take on a larger role in aiding Ukraine as well as in its own national security. The administration has worked with NATO to devise a new method of getting U.S. military equipment to Ukraine that does not force the United States to bear the cost of the weaponry.
Zelensky has sought to stay in alignment with his European counterparts and met with many of them last week ahead of the Trump-Putin meeting.
Trump has also discussed the possibility of putting additional economic pressure on Russia and its allies to force them to come to the table more openly. He had set a deadline for Russia to agree to a deal or face increased economic sanctions and tariffs, but the administration did not follow through and instead announced the Trump-Putin summit.
“The moment the president puts those additional sanctions, that’s the end of the talks,” Rubio added. “You’ve basically locked in at least another year to year and a half of war, and death, and destruction. We may unfortunately wind up there, but we don’t want to wind up there.”
EUROPEAN LEADERS ANNOUNCE THEY’LL JOIN ZELESNKY IN WHITE HOUSE MEETING WITH TRUMP
If Monday’s conversation goes well, it could be the best opportunity to end the conflict since it began more than three and a half years ago. If it’s more reminiscent of Zelensky’s February meeting with Trump, it could spell doom for his country.
After Zelensky’s blow-up with Trump and Vice President JD Vance, the Trump administration temporarily halted military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine.
