Zelensky Returns to White House With Squad of EU Leaders

Time​ Magazine

21 hours ago

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky returns to the White House on Monday for the first time since his infamous blowup with President Donald Trump earlier this year, which led to a rupture in relations that threatened to derail Kyiv's war effort.
This time, however, Zelensky will be accompanied by at least five European heads of state, who have rallied around the Ukrainian leader to ease pressure from Trump as the president appears eager to forge a final deal to end the war regardless of the cost to Ukraine.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen all lined up on Sunday to announce they would join Zelensky at the White House. Mark Rutte, Secretary-General of NATO, will also be going.
Macron said the high-level support team, which has called itself the "coalition of the willing," was aimed at showing a united front between Europe and Ukraine. "If we show weakness today in front of Russia, we are laying the ground for future conflicts," he said on Sunday.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking to CBS, sought to play down rumors that the leaders of Europe's largest economies were traveling to the White House to prevent another argument between Trump and Zelensky.
"They're not coming here tomorrow to keep Zelenskiy from being bullied. They're coming here tomorrow because we've been working with the Europeans," he said. "We invited them to come."
Here's what to expect at Monday's meeting.
Ceasefire or final deal?
The visit comes at a crucial moment in Kyiv's effort to fight off Russia's invasion. Russia has been inching forward in the key region of Donetsk, and Trump has just emerged from a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin more aligned with Moscow on several issues.
Crucially, Trump appeared to reverse his previous position and join with Putin in calling for a final deal to end the war, rather than a ceasefire, as called for by Zelensky and European leaders.
Zelensky has long argued that a peace deal cannot be achieved without a ceasefire first. He reiterated that on Sunday, ahead of his meeting with Trump.
'It's impossible to do this under the pressure of weapons. So it's necessary to cease fire and work quickly on a final deal. We'll talk about it in Washington,' he said.
European leaders have stood behind Zelensky on this point.
"You cannot negotiate peace under falling bombs," Poland's foreign ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
A fight about security guarantees
One of the primary causes of the Zelensky-Trump fight in February was a belief in the Trump Administration that Zelensky should agree to a ceasefire with Russia even without clear security guarantees from the U.S.
Zelensky's refusal to accept a deal without those guarantees earned him ire from Trump's MAGA base, but he sees them as vital to preventing another Russian invasion.
At the time, U.S. guarantees amounted to a deal that would give U.S. companies access to Ukrainian minerals. That appears to have shifted.
On Sunday, Trump envoy Steve Witkoff told CNN's "State of the Union" that the U.S. might offer 'Article 5-like protection" to Ukraine, likening it to the measure that triggers a military response from all NATO members if one member is attacked. He said it was "the first time we had ever heard the Russians agree to that."
Under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, an attack on a member country requires each member to 'consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members and will take the actions it deems necessary.' Ukraine's efforts to join NATO were a key reason behind Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Rubio was less clear on what the guarantees might look like.
"How that's constructed, what we call it, how it's built, what guarantees are built into it that are enforceable, that's what we'll be talking about over the next few days with our partners," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
He added that it would be "a huge concession" if Trump agreed to it.
That might answer one of Zelensky's concerns, but that is not the only one.
Land swaps are on the table
The issue of land swaps has been a key point of contention between the U.S. and Ukraine for some months.
Trump has urged Ukraine publicly and privately to give up land in return for peace. When announcing his summit with Putin last week, he worried both Europe and Ukraine when he appeared to preface the talks by insisting that Kyiv would have to cede land occupied by Russia.
'There'll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both,' he said. 'We're going to get some back, and we're going to get some switched.'
After the talks, he reiterated that call, arguing that "Russia is a very big power, and they're not."
As he has done in the past when the issue of ceding occupied Ukrainian territory has been raised, Zelensky cited his country's Constitution—which states that its territory cannot be given away— in rejecting the proposal.
'The answer to Ukraine's territorial question is already in the Constitution of Ukraine,' he said. 'No one will step back from this, nor will anyone be able to.'
In the aftermath of the summit, proposals about precisely which land would be swapped have been leaked to the media. Trump reportedly relayed an offer from the Kremlin that it would freeze most front lines in the conflict if Ukraine ceded all of Donetsk and Luhansk, according to Reuters, which cited sources familiar with the offer. The same offer was reported in the Financial Times. Under the proposed deal, Russia would freeze the front lines in the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, the outlets reported. In return, Russia would withdraw from parts of the Sumy and Kharkiv regions— much smaller areas.
Such a deal would require Zelesnky to agree to give Russia land it has not captured in return for a much smaller area. The Ukrainian leader rejected the demand, Reuters reported.
Many in Trump's MAGA base have grown weary of continued support for Ukraine and have come to view Zelensky as ungrateful for not agreeing to the President's demands to deal with Putin, whatever the costs.
That pressure will be there again, perhaps even greater this time, because Trump has spent significant political capital by organizing his Alaska summit.