Europeans to back Zelenskiy in Washington as Trump presses Ukraine deal

By Andrew MacAskill, Tom Balmforth and Max Hunder

LONDON/KYIV (Reuters) -European leaders will join Volodymyr Zelenskiy to meet Donald Trump in Washington, they said on Sunday, seeking to shore up Zelenskiy's position as the U.S. president presses Ukraine to accept a quick peace deal to end Europe's deadliest war in 80 years.

Trump is leaning on Zelenskiy to strike an agreement after he met Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin in Alaska and emerged more aligned with Moscow on seeking a peace deal instead of a ceasefire first. Trump and Zelenskiy will meet on Monday.

"If peace is not going to be possible here and this is just going to continue on as a war, people will continue to die by the thousands ... we may unfortunately wind up there, but we don't want to wind up there," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an interview with CBS' "Face the Nation."

Trump on Sunday promised "BIG PROGRESS ON RUSSIA" in a social media post without specifying what this might be.

Sources briefed on Moscow's thinking told Reuters the U.S. and Russian leaders have discussed proposals for Russia to relinquish tiny pockets of occupied Ukraine in exchange for Kyiv ceding a swathe of fortified land in the east and freezing the front lines elsewhere.

Top Trump officials hinted the fate of Ukraine's eastern Donbas region - which incorporates Donetsk and Luhansk and which is already mostly under Russian control - was on the line, while some sort of defensive pact was also on the table.

"We were able to win the following concession, that the United States could offer Article 5-like protection," Trump envoy Steve Witkoff told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, suggesting this would be in lieu of Ukraine seeking NATO membership. He said it was "the first time we had ever heard the Russians agree to that."

Article 5 of NATO's founding treaty enshrines the principle of collective defense, the notion that an attack on a single member is considered an attack on them all.

That pledge may not be enough to sway leaders in Kyiv to sign over Donbas. Ukraine's borders were already meant to have been guaranteed when Ukraine surrendered a Soviet-era nuclear arsenal in 1994, and it proved to be little deterrent when Russia absorbed Crimea in 2014 and then launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. The war has now dragged on for 3-1/2 years and killed or wounded more than 1 million people.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer hosted a meeting of allies on Sunday to bolster Zelenskiy's hand, hoping in particular to lock down robust security guarantees for Ukraine that would include a U.S. role. 

The Europeans are keen to help Zelenskiy avoid a repeat of his last Oval Office meeting in February. That went disastrously, with Trump and Vice President JD Vance giving the Ukrainian leader a public dressing-down, accusing him of being ungrateful and disrespectful.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will also travel to Washington, as will Finland's President Alexander Stubb, whose access to Trump included rounds of golf in Florida earlier this year, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is an admirer of many of Trump's policies.

EUROPEAN SHOW OF UNITY

European leaders at the Sunday meeting projected unity, welcoming U.S. talk of a security guarantee but stressing no discussions over territory could take place without Kyiv's involvement and clear arrangements to safeguard the rest of Ukraine's land.

Some called for an immediate ceasefire, something Trump originally said he was trying to secure during his summit with Putin. Trump later changed course and agreed with the Russians that peace negotiations could come without a ceasefire, an idea that was dismissed by some of Ukraine's European allies.

"You cannot negotiate peace under falling bombs," Poland's foreign ministry said in a statement.

A joint communique released by Britain, France and Germany after the meeting said their leaders were ready "to deploy a reassurance force once hostilities have ceased, and to help secure Ukraine's skies and seas and regenerate Ukraine's armed forces."

Some European countries, led by Britain and France, have been working since last year on such a plan, but other countries in the region remain reluctant to become involved militarily, underlining how fraught peace discussions are even among Kyiv's allies.

Zelenskiy said on social media platform X there had been "clear support for Ukraine's independence and sovereignty" at the meeting. "Everyone agrees that borders must not be changed by force."

He added that any prospective security guarantees "must really be very practical, delivering protection on land, in the air, and at sea, and must be developed with Europe's participation."

Rubio said both Russia and Ukraine would need to make concessions to reach a peace deal and that security guarantees for Ukraine would be discussed on Monday. He also said there would have to be additional consequences for Russia if no deal was reached. 

"I'm not saying we're on the verge of a peace deal, but I am saying that we saw movement, enough movement to justify a follow-up meeting with Zelenskiy and the Europeans, enough movement for us to dedicate even more time to this," Rubio told broadcaster CBS. 

For his part, Putin briefed his close ally, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, about the Alaska talks, and also spoke with Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. 

Trump said on Friday that Ukraine should make a deal to end the war because "Russia is a very big power, and they're not."

After the Alaska summit, Trump phoned Zelenskiy and told him the Kremlin chief had offered to freeze most front lines if Ukraine ceded all of Donetsk, a source familiar with the matter said. Zelenskiy rejected the demand.

(Reporting by Andrew MacAskill, Tom Balmforth, Andreas Rinke, Layli Foroudi, Max Hunder, Julia Payne, Joshua McElwee, Dave Graham, David Ljunggren, Sudip Kar-Gupta, Jan Strupczewski and Trevor Hunnicutt; Writing by Matthias Williams and Raphael Satter; Editing by Colleen Jenkins, Frances Kerry, Rod Nickel and Chris Reese)