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European leaders will accompany Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for his critical meeting with US President Donald Trump in Washington on Monday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced Sunday.
A ceasefire in Ukraine had been one of Trump’s central demands ahead of his Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a meeting to which Ukraine and its European allies were not invited.
The summit produced no breakthrough and Trump has ruled out an immediate truce. Leaders attending the Washington talks alongside Zelenskyy include German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and von der Leyen herself to press the US president on the urgency of halting hostilities.
The European leaders’ presence at Zelenskyy’s side, demonstrating Europe’s support for Ukraine, could potentially help ease concerns in Kyiv and in other European capitals that Zelenskyy risks being railroaded into a peace deal that Trump says he wants to broker with Russia.
Von der Leyen, head of the European Union’s executive branch, posted on X that “at the request of President Zelenskyy, I will join the meeting with President Trump and other European leaders in the White House tomorrow.”
The Ukrainian president’s last Oval Office visit in February ended in an extraordinary shouting match, with Trump and Vice President JD Vance publicly berating Zelensky for not showing enough gratitude for US aid.
In an interview with broadcaster Fox News after his sit-down with Putin, Trump had suggested that the onus was now on Zelensky to secure a peace deal as they work towards an eventual trilateral summit with Putin.
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View All“It’s really up to President Zelensky to get it done,” Trump said.
Meanwhile, the conflict in Ukraine rages on, with both Kyiv and Moscow launching attack drones at each other Sunday.
With inputs from agencies