EVIAN-LES-BAINS, France — Kyiv’s allies are scrambling to avoid a blowup with U.S. President Donald Trump at the G7 summit as he emerges from the Iran crisis and turns his attention back to the Russia-Ukraine war.
Trump was all smiles as he arrived in France a day after his birthday, telling reporters that everything was “nice” before heading into a cordial meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron.
Then, the U.S. president vowed to use his newfound bandwidth to settle the war in Ukraine, which he had previously promised to end within 24 hours of taking office, during the 2024 election campaign.
“Now that this is finished, we are gonna be focusing on that and see if we can get that one done,” Trump said, sitting alongside Macron. “Twenty-five thousand people a month are dying, mostly soldiers. That shouldn’t happen.”
Those words aren’t reassuring for Ukraine’s main backers in Europe.
Behind the scenes, European officials fear that the U.S. president — freed from having to manage the Iran crisis day-to-day — could try to retake control of the Ukraine peace talks, leave them on the sidelines and derail their strategy of putting maximal pressure on Russia and fully supporting Ukraine.
“Having Trump be distracted was not necessarily a bad thing,” said an EU diplomat who, like others in this piece, was granted anonymity because they weren’t allowed to comment publicly.
The question of how to end the war in Ukraine will return to the fore on Tuesday as Trump and other G7 leaders sit down with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy for a two-hour working session.
Zelenskyy has continued to say publicly that U.S. involvement remains key to ending the war. The Ukrainian president said that when he spoke to Trump on Sunday, the two had “good ideas that could help bring peace closer.”
“The president has a humanitarian heart and wants this war settled so the senseless killing ends,” said a Trump administration official. “The president and his team have worked very hard to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, and he remains optimistic that we’ll ultimately get a peace deal done.”
But for Europeans, Trump’s assertion on Monday that he can see a way to “do something” — after taking calls separately from Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Zelenskyy on Sunday — risks seeing them sidelined once again.
On Monday, the French president argued that Europeans now foot the bill for Ukraine’s weapons and have a say.
“The right kind of negotiation is one with Ukraine and Russia sitting around the table, and the Europeans and Americans by their side,” he said in an interview with TF1 channel.
Diverging approaches
Speaking to reporters on Monday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that boosting financial support to Ukraine should be at the top of the G7 agenda.
“Europe keeps up its unwavering support to Ukraine,” von der Leyen said, noting that the bloc’s €90 billion was covering two-thirds of Kyiv’s financial needs for this year and the next.
“For the remaining third, we need Ukraine’s partners to step up,” she added. “This will be a topic at this summit.”
Underscoring Europe’s approach of hugging Ukraine close, von der Leyen also touted the fact that ministers had agreed this week to open formal EU membership negotiations with both Ukraine and Moldova. “Ukraine has delivered, so we have to deliver, too,” she said.
The Commission chief announced an extra €75 million in EU grants to Ukraine and a €15 billion loan to France to boost its defense industry under the bloc’s SAFE program.
Standing next to von der Leyen, European Council President António Costa said that the “unity and determination of the G7 are essential” to ending a conflict that has gone on longer than World War I.
Indeed, having taken over the main burden of supporting Ukraine from the United States, EU leaders are looking to rally the U.S. behind a common negotiating line in any future talks with Russia, according to senior officials who were granted anonymity to discuss confidential summit preparations.
“It’s important that the other G7 countries, in particular the United States… don’t degrade their position toward Ukraine,” an official from Macron’s office told journalists last week.
Talking to Putin
Yet before talks had started in earnest, Trump gave the European side reason to be concerned — starting with a lengthy phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on his birthday.
“We had a very good conversation yesterday with President Zelenskyy and President Putin, and I see — maybe we can do something there,” Trump said.
“I think they are both very open to it.”
Adding to European concerns, Putin’s presidential aide, Yury Ushakov, said that Trump’s appointed negotiators on Ukraine, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, will travel to Moscow in the near future.
Two questions are likely to dominate discussions Tuesday: How to convince Putin to negotiate seriously for peace, and who should negotiate on behalf of Ukraine’s allies.
On the first score, the EU is planning to finalize a 21st package of sanctions against Russia in the coming weeks that would clamp down on the country’s shadow fleet of oil tankers and f maintain a price cap on purchases of Russian oil.
But there’s little indication that the United States, which has eased energy sanctions against Russia amid a spike in global prices, wants to follow suit or indeed stump up any additional cash to back Kyiv’s war effort.
The other hot-button issue is who should lead any future talks and what approach they should take. Zelenskyy has insisted in recent meetings with EU leaders that Europe should be at the table, not as a mediator but as an ally with shared interests.
European and Ukrainian officials said ahead of the G7 that they want to get the U.S. onside with a strong common negotiating position — dropping any suggestion that Kyiv should cede territory.
Germany, France and the United Kingdom — a trio known as the “E3” powers — last week took their first tentative steps toward engaging directly with Moscow, sending their envoys to Moscow to speak with Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin.
The trio took a cautious approach, reiterating EU leaders’ demands for a complete and immediate ceasefire, robust security guarantees for Ukraine, and the use of the current contact line as a starting point for any talks.
But if Trump gets involved, he may not share Europe’s view of how the talks should go — or even want them at the table.
“It turns out that the only person in the planet — it speaks to the president’s role on the world stage — who can bring the two sides together and try to negotiate the end of this war is President Trump,” said a senior Trump administration official.
