European leaders including Britain’s Keir Starmer will join Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, at a White House meeting on Monday with Donald Trump, in a coordinated effort to push back on a US-endorsed “peace plan” that would allow Russia to take further Ukrainian territory.
The UK prime minister, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, the Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, and Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, will all accompany Zelenskyy in the Oval Office.
“The talks will address, among other things, security guarantees, territorial issues, and continued support for Ukraine in its defence against Russian aggression. This includes maintaining pressure on sanctions,” Germany’s government said.
The purpose of the trip was to achieve a “fair and lasting peace that safeguards Ukraine’s vital interests and Europe’s security”, the French presidency added.
A video call organised by the UK, France and Germany is due to take place on Sunday with other European allies. It follows reports that Trump will back a plan to cede unoccupied Ukrainian territory to Russia to secure an end to the war between the two countries.
Trump told European leaders that he believed a peace deal could be negotiated if Zelenskyy agreed to give up the Donbas region, which Russian invaders have not been able to seize in more than three years of fighting, the New York Times reported, citing two senior European officials.
Two sources with direct knowledge of the talks in Alaska told the Guardian that Putin demanded Ukraine withdraw from Donbas, which is made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as a condition for ending the war, but offered Trump a freeze along the remaining frontline.
Although Luhansk is almost entirely under Russian control, Ukraine still holds key parts of Donetsk, including the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk and heavily fortified positions whose defence has cost tens of thousands of lives.
Putin told Trump that in exchange for Donetsk and Luhansk he would halt further advances and freeze the frontline in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where Russian forces occupy significant areas.
Trump’s support for ceding Ukraine’s Donbas region, which is rich in mineral resources including coal and iron ore, to Russia came as he voiced support for moving straight to a peace deal and not via a ceasefire, which, Trump said in a social media post on Saturday, “often times do not hold up”.
US support for ceding the Donbas to Russia represents a breach with Ukraine and European allies that oppose such a deal. According to Reuters, Russia is demanding 6,600 sq km of Donbas, while offering to withdraw from 440 sq km in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions.
As part of a deal, the US is ready to be part of security guarantees for Ukraine, Merz said on Saturday. Trump has threatened economic penalties on countries that buy Russian oil if Moscow refuses a deal, and flew US bombers over the Russian leader as he arrived in Alaska.
But Ukrainian and European leaders fear that a straight-to-peace deal, skipping over a preliminary ceasefire, gives Moscow an upper hand in talks.
Speaking to the BBC on Sunday, the former British defence secretary Ben Wallace said he was “not very optimistic” that Monday’s Oval Office talks would lead to peace. He said he hoped the “unedifying pincer movement” – when Trump and the US vice-president, JD Vance, attacked Zelenskyy during their previous meeting in February – would not be repeated.
Wallace said Trump’s apparent endorsement of Putin’s territorial demands amounted to 1930s-style “appeasement”. He said the strategy – with pressure piled on Ukraine to agree – may save lives “in the short term” but in the long term “would probably put us at greater risk”.
Trump claimed on Saturday in his post that “it was determined by all” that it was better to go directly to negotiated a peace agreement, though European leaders indicated this was not their view.
A joint statement issued by European leaders said they were “ready to work with US President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy towards a trilateral summit with European support” but “it will be up to Ukraine to make decisions on its territory. International borders must not be changed by force”.
They said they welcomed “President Trump’s efforts to stop the killing in Ukraine, end Russia’s war of aggression, and achieve just and lasting peace”.
Zelenskyy said in a statement after his conversations with Trump and the European leaders: “The positions are clear. A real peace must be achieved, one that will be lasting, not just another pause between Russian invasions. Killings must stop as soon as possible, the fire must cease both on the battlefield and in the sky, as well as against our port infrastructure. All Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilians must be released, and the children abducted by Russia must be returned.”
In a later statement on social media on Saturday he added that the move to go directly to a peace agreement without a ceasefire first “complicates the situation”.
If Moscow lacks “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”, he said.
European leaders, including Macron, Merz and Starmer, are set to discuss the issues with Zelenskyy on Sunday via a video call before his meeting with Trump, the French president’s office said in a statement.
Olga Tokariuk, a fellow at the Centre for European Policy Analysis, said Zelenskyy had a “difficult task” in Washington. He had to “demonstrate that Ukraine wants peace, but not at any cost, to ensure Ukraine still gets US support,” she said. At the same time he could not make concessions “unacceptable for Ukrainians”.
Trump was unlikely to treat Zelenskyy with the “same friendliness as Putin”, she predicted. “The US under Trump is no longer willing to stand by its democratic allies, while instead it is embracing the tyrants,” she added.
