Europe and Ukraine to hold Trump call ahead of Putin-Alaska meet
MUNICH – President Donald Trump will join a video call Wednesday with European leaders and the Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, who will implore him not to capitulate Russia’s requests at the summit on Friday with Vladimir Putin in Alaska.
Despite the invasion of Russia which impacted them most directly, the European powers and Ukraine were not invited to the Trump-Putin summit to the Elmendorf-Richardson anchorage base. There is a growing alarm in Europe that the leaders of Washington and Moscow could emerge with a disastrous agreement for Ukraine and the vulnerability of the continent to future Russian attacks.
In a week of frantic diplomacy, the virtual summit will include Trump alongside the leaders of Ukraine, Germany, France, Great Britain, Finland, Italy, Poland, the European Union and NATO, according to the German government, which organized the appeal.
Trump described them as “great people who want to see an agreement concluded” in a social position before the talks.
Zelenskyy will be there in person, having approached the helicopter in Berlin where he was greeted by the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. This is the last of what Zelenskyy says he has been more than 30 conversations with the world leaders this week.
The herd of digitally linked leaders “will, among other things, attack other options to put pressure on Russia,” said the German government spokesman, adding that “peace negotiations and related issues of territorial claims and security” would be on the agenda.
Most European leaders fear that Russia will not stop at the 20% of Ukraine that it currently occupies after its large -scale invasion in 2022, and could rather use this taking of land to launch other attacks against the former Soviet vassals of Moscow. Putin described the fall of the USSR as a historical tragedy and thinks that the Baltic States, which are now members of the EU and NATO, should be brought back to its sphere of influence.
Wednesday calls are a European unit exhibition behind Ukraine and other Russian neighbors who fear its next move. EU leaders will keep separate telephone discussions before and after the call with Trump, the latter, including Canada, indicating the level of coordination between them.
The European powers say that there must be a ceasefire before peace talks can start – something rejected by Russia – and negotiations cannot occur without Ukraine. They argue that Ukraine must have “security guarantees”, perhaps in the form of Western peace soldiers, so that the Kremlin does not use the break to regroup and attack again.
