A cadre of European leaders put on happy faces at the White House on Monday, offering praise for President Donald Trump’s efforts to broker peace in Ukraine while also seeking to keep the United States in the fold ahead of negotiations with Russia.
Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky early Monday afternoon in the Oval Office, a sitdown that couldn’t have gone more differently than Zelensky’s previous trip to Washington, D.C., to visit Trump. That meeting ended with a reporter, and eventually Vice President JD Vance, castigating Zelensky for not wearing a suit or properly thanking the United States for footing the bill for Ukraine’s defense of their territory.
Monday’s affair saw Zelensky and Trump meeting with their top aides for nearly two hours before the pair joined seven other European leaders for an expanded multilateral conversation. That group included NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and French President Emmanuel Macron.
The multilateral meeting began with Trump lauding Zelensky before passing the microphone to his European counterparts, and was followed by a “family photo” of the gathered dignitaries.
However, even some of the most experienced European Trump whisperers couldn’t hide all of their trepidation about Trump’s push for a peace deal, particularly any agreement that hands Russia most, if not all, of Crimea.
“The next steps ahead are the more complicated ones. Now the path is open. You opened it last Friday, but now the way is open for complicated negotiations. And to be honest, we all would like to see a ceasefire,” Merz commented, subtly putting pressure on Trump to continue pushing for an immediate ceasefire ahead of peace negotiations, which he has strayed from in recent days. “I can’t imagine that the next meeting would take place without a ceasefire. So let’s work on that, and let’s try to put pressure on Russia, because the credibility of these efforts, these efforts we are undertaking today, are depending on at least a ceasefire from the beginning of the serious negotiations, from next step on.”
Earlier on Monday, Trump had stated he didn’t think a ceasefire was necessary, saying previous deals he had made to end wars did not involve one and signaling he was prioritizing securing a peace deal. However, during the multileader meeting, Trump said, “All of us would obviously prefer an immediate ceasefire while we work on a lasting peace.”
Another proposal to give Ukraine security guarantees, similar to NATO’s Article 5 enshrinement of collective defense, did receive a warm reception during the multileader meeting, even as Russian officials reportedly decry the idea. Von der Leyen said the guarantees are “important” and that it was “very good to hear” they were being discussed.
Meloni complimented Trump’s commitment to ensuring Ukrainian security guarantees, but noted that Italy had been pushing for U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine for months.
“I’m happy that we will begin from a proposal, which is the, let’s say, ‘Article Five’ model, which was Italian at the beginning. So we are always ready to bring our proposals for peace, for dialogue,” she continued. “It’s something we have to build together to guarantee peace and to defend the security of our nation.”
By the time Trump kicked reporters out of the room, he predicted that negotiations could close within seven to fourteen days.
“I think President Putin wants to find an answer to and we’ll see, and in a certain period of time, not very far from now, a week or two weeks, we’re going to know whether or not we’re going to solve this or is this horrible fighting going to continue,” the president told reporters. “We’ll do the best to get it ended, and I believe you have two willing parties, and usually that’s good news.”
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Still, Trump did express some doubt that Putin and Zelensky would agree to peace terms within his time frame.
“I want to make a deal, and we’ll journey together, and we’ll go over, and we’ll see if it can be done, and it’s possible it might not be able to be done,” the president offered. “On the other hand, it’s possible it will save thousands and thousands of lives a week. And so it’s something we really have to do, or at least we have to give it our best.”
