With the United States seemingly content to take a back seat, a high-level meeting in Paris on Thursday will seek to answer the question: Can European powers step up and bring Ukraine and Russia closer to peace?
An actual halt in fighting seems an increasingly distant ambition, with President Donald Trump — who called into the meeting — having said that he remained hopeful but that the two sides were clearly “not ready yet” to make a deal.
“Trump emphasized that Europe must stop purchasing Russian oil that is funding the war," a White House official told NBC News on Thursday after Trump spoke to European leaders. The official added that he also told the leaders they had to “place economic pressure on China for funding Russia’s war efforts.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday during a visit to Beijing that he will end the war by force if Ukraine does not agree to his demands. He suggested he would meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but only in Moscow.
With Trump adopting a lesser role after his peace push stalled, European powers hope to plug the diplomatic gap.
They met in Paris early Thursday as part of the informal “Coalition of the Willing” — nations that say they are prepared to underwrite the “security guarantees” Ukraine says it needs to be confident any future ceasefire would hold.
Hosting the talks, French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday that after months of planning, “we are ready as Europeans to offer security guarantees to Ukraine and the Ukrainian people the day a peace deal is signed.” He declined to offer details, saying they were “extremely confidential.”
The meeting included Zelenskyy, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
During the meeting, Starmer “emphasized that the group had an unbreakable pledge to Ukraine, with President Trump’s backing, and it was clear they now needed to go even further to apply pressure on Putin to secure a cessation of hostilities,” his office said afterward.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was due to attend, but a technical problem forced his plane to turn around, meaning he will join the summit virtually.
After the meeting, the leaders held a 90-minute phone call with Trump, who has said that he is willing to offer American support as a “backstop” but that the initiative must be led by the Europeans.
Macron said after the meeting that 26 countries, which he did not name, had agreed to send troops to Ukraine after the war ends.
“We have today 26 countries that have formally committed — with several others to clarify their position — but 26 countries committed to deploy as a reassurance force troops in Ukraine or to be present on the ground, at sea, in air, in order to bring this reassurance to the Ukrainian territory and to Ukraine the day after a ceasefire or peace," he said, adding that if Russia refuses peace talks, then additional sanctions would be coordinated with the United States.
Andrii Yermak, Zelenskyy's powerful chief of staff, said Thursday that he had met with Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, in Paris.
The security guarantees "must be strong and effective—in the air, at sea, and on land," he said in a statement. "The war launched by Russia must be stopped. President Trump’s principle of ‘peace through strength’ is exactly the kind of approach that can influence the aggressor."
For Trump, the war is proving harder to resolve than his onetime claim that he would be able to fix the situation in 24 hours. He has increasingly expressed disappointment and even anger toward Putin but has repeatedly stopped short of imposing new sanctions against Moscow despite numerous threats.
After his push for a meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy appeared to have fallen apart, Trump conceded Wednesday that there was still a chasm between the two leaders.
“Something is going to happen, but they are not ready yet. But something is going to happen. We are going to get it done,” Trump said in a phone interview with CBS News.
Since the Kremlin's full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has been bombed nightly by Russian missiles and drones and repeatedly said it is ready to call a ceasefire. Russia has rejected that, maintaining it will not do so until Ukraine has fulfilled a set of demands that resemble surrender.
However, Kyiv is still deeply wary of a ceasefire, warning Russia could use it to rearm, regroup and launch other attacks on Ukraine and neighboring countries in Europe.
That’s why it and other European powers say the much-vaunted but knotty “security guarantees” are essential. They could come in the form of European peacekeeper troops being stationed in Ukraine to uphold the ceasefire, although Russia has summarily rejected that idea so far.
During his high-profile visit to China on Wednesday, Putin gave no signal of shifting from his absolutist demands that Ukraine must surrender and come back into Moscow’s sphere of influence.
He believes he is winning this conflict, throwing thousands of troops' lives into his war machine each week for grinding battlefield gains.
Putin did say that “if common sense prevails, then it is possible to agree on an acceptable option for ending this conflict,” adding that Trump’s “sincere desire to find this solution” meant there is “a certain light at the end of the tunnel.”
However, he said, if Ukraine did not accept its demands, “then we will have to solve all our tasks by force.”
