European leaders to join Ukraine

European and NATO leaders announced on Sunday that they will join President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Washington for Crucial conversations with President Trumpmeeting with the Ukrainian leader after his exclusion from Mr. Trump summit With Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The remarkable movement, with a European leader after another announcing that they will be next to Zelenskyy when he travels to the White House on Monday, was an apparent effort to ensure that the meeting is better than the last in February, when Trump Reprended the Ukrainian President In an encounter with an oval office with heating.

“Europeans are very afraid that the Oval office scene will be repeated, so they want to support Mr. Zelenskyy to the grip,” said Retired French general Dominique Trinquand, former head of the France Military Mission in the United Nations.

“It’s a power struggle and a position of force that could work with Trump,” he said in a telephone interview.

The presence of European leaders on the side of Zelenskyy, which demonstrates Europe’s support to Ukraine, could help relieve concerns in kyiv and other European capitals that Ukraine runs the risk of being ferroviated in a peace agreement that Trump says he wants to negotiate with Russia.

Appearing in “face the nation with Margaret Brennan” On Sunday, Rubio retreated the idea that European leaders join Zelenskyy in Washington to provide a support for Ukrainian president to avoid accepting a bad treatment after the contentious meeting earlier this year.

“We have been working with these people for weeks, for weeks in these things,” Rubio said. “They will come here tomorrow because they are supposed to come here tomorrow. We invite you to come. The president invited them to come.”

The secretary described that after the meeting with Putin, “we felt, and I accepted, that there was enough progress, not much progress, but sufficient progress in those conversations to allow us to move on to the next phase.”

“I am not saying that we are on the verge of a peace agreement, but I am saying that we saw movement,” Rubio added. “Enough movement to justify a follow -up meeting with Zelenskyy and Europeans, enough movement to devote ourselves even more time to this.”

It was not clear immediately if all or simply some of the European leaders would participate in the real meeting with Trump.

The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced in X that he will participate in the conversations, “at the request of President Zelenskyy.”

The general secretary of the NATO Military Alliance, Mark Rutte, will also participate in the meeting, said his press service.

President Emmanuel Macron’s office announced that the French leader will travel to Washington on Monday “next to President Zelenskyy”, although he did not immediately specify that he will be at the meeting.

The German Chancellor Friedrich Merz will also be part of the European group, but the statement of his office also did not specify that he will be in Trump conversations.

The grouped trip stressed the determination of European leaders to ensure that Europe has a voice in the attempt to make the peace of Mr. Trump, after the summit of the president of the United States on Friday with Putin, to which Zelenskyy was not invited.

• Ukraine
• Donald Trump
• Policy
• Friedrich Merz
• Vladimir Putin
• Mark Rutte
• Emmanuel Macron
• Volodymyr Zelenskyy
• European Union