Washington, USA – European leaders who traveled to Washington on Monday to participate in the meeting between United States President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodomyr, Zelenskyy, reaffirmed their support for Ukraine and backed a possible trilateral meeting between Ukraine, Russia and the US, but called for a more active participation.
“As a follow up, we would need the quadrilateral meeting, because when we speak about security guarantees, we speak about the whole security of the European continent,” French President Emmanuel Macron said,
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“I think we could take a really important step forward today, a historic step actually, to come out of this meeting in terms of security for Ukraine and security in Europe,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said.
Starmer and Macron’s declarations followed a multilateral meeting the White House, also attended by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the President of Finland, Alexander Stubb, and the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
The European bloc pushed for a ceasefire and solid and lasting security guarantees for Ukraine.
“Let’s try to put pressure on Russia, because the credibility of these efforts we are undertaking today depend on at least a cease-fire from the beginning of the serious negotiations,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told Trump.
The European leaders also noted that security guarantees are key to a possible peace process, as highlighted by Meloni, who said that it is an important task to ensure that Russian aggression does not recur.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte defined the importance that the US will participate in security guarantees for Ukraine in collaboration with European partners.
Trump insisted that the security guarantees could be finalized as early as Monday.
Territorial exchange
The United States President was the only one of the leaders at the table to mention outright that it is necessary to “discuss the possible exchanges of territory, taking into consideration the current line of contact.”
After the multilateral, in the Oval Office, Zelenskyy was seen with Trump discussing in front of a map of Ukraine brought by his team upon his arrival at the White House.
During the meeting, Trump insisted that Putin, with whom he met in Alaska three days ago, wants peace and is in favor of accepting European and US security guarantees for Ukraine.
During Friday’s meeting in Anchorage, the Russian president raised an exchange of territories that would imply that Ukraine would have to cede to Russia the sovereignty of regions such as Donetsk and Lugansk, which Kyiv said was unconstitutional according to the Ukrainian Magna Carta.
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