When the six European leaders and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy trooped into the White House on Monday, they feared the worst: a public dressing-down, perhaps, or a fresh threat to ditch Kyiv altogether. They got neither.
But the choreography could not disguise the thinness of the outcome.
There is still no clarity on what security guarantees for Ukraine might look like, no sign of a ceasefire, and little confidence that a Putin-Zelenskyy summit will ever happen.
The takeaways
European leaders had set off for Washington with a sense of unease, haunted by the prospect of another televised bust-up between Trump and Zelenskyy. Instead, their exchange was, by Trumpian standards, almost decorous.
Likewise, the optics of the three-way meeting in the Oval Office between Trump, Zelenskyy, and the six European leaders, who tagged along to flatter the American president, were reassuring. It looked as if the Europeans had done their homework on the Trump playbook – and played along.
On content, Europeans went to Washington with three main objectives: to ensure Zelenskyy’s survival, push back on Putin’s maximalist demands following Friday’s Alaska talks, and determine what Western security guarantees could realistically be offered to Kyiv.
Monday’s discussion centred mainly on preparations for a possible trilateral summit between Russia, Ukraine and, possibly, Trump, and security guarantees.
Ukraine had also been trying to butter up Trump with a promise to buy $100 billion of US-manufactured weapons financed by Europe in a bid to obtain his commitment to US guarantees, according to the Financial Times.
Meanwhile, public statements afterwards suggest that territorial concessions, instead, were not discussed.
What came up empty
Anything solid.
While Europeans might have sighed in relief that Trump may have nodded along to the idea of Western security guarantees, their shape remains anyone’s guess. Details, say European officials, will be hammered out, likely over the course of the next weeks.
It is also uncertain whether Putin would actually meet with Zelenskyy in person. Finland’s President Alexander Stubb told CNN that Trump’s decision to call Putin during the meeting had been a “coordinated” move with Europeans and Kyiv and meant to test the ground for such a summit.
The two leaders’ meeting could take place within two or three weeks, according to some participants of the White House meeting.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News that the American side was “working on that now to try to set that up for them to meet somewhere,” while France’s Emmanuel Macron floated Geneva as a “neutral country.”
The one point European leaders stressed in the public remarks after the Oval Office exchange was their wish for Trump’s help in securing a ceasefire before any next steps.
But the US president wasn’t sold on the idea: “I don’t think you need a ceasefire,” he repeated on Monday.
The request also comes as Moscow has made sudden advances in Ukraine over the past weeks and shown no sign it would stop its assault.
Next steps
EU leaders will virtually huddle on Tuesday at 1 pm Brussels time to coordinate the next steps on security guarantees for Ukraine after Washington.
According to several European officials, a flurry of meetings among the Coalition of the Willing, and national security advisors could follow in the coming days to hash out further details of the European offer to Trump.
Another virtual meeting between Europeans and Trump could also happen as early as Tuesday or later this week.
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