European leaders to join Zelenskyy’s meeting with Trump : NPR
DOSSIER – President Donald Trump welcomes the president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House in Washington, Friday, February 28, 2025.
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Ben Curtis / AP
KYIV – European and NATO leaders announced on Sunday that they would join President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Washington for crucial interviews with President Donald Trump, joining the Ukrainian leader after his exclusion from the Trump summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
The remarkable decision – with a European leader after the other announcing that they will be alongside Zelenskyy when he goes to the White House on Monday – was an apparent effort to ensure that the meeting takes place better than the last in February, when Trump reprimanded the Ukrainian president during an animated oval office meeting.
“Europeans are very afraid of the rehearsal of the scene of oval offices and they therefore want to support Mr. Zelenskyy at the handle,” said French general Dominique Trinquand, former head of the military mission of France at the United Nations.
“It is a power struggle and a position of force that could work with Trump,” he said during a telephone interview.
The presence of European leaders at the Zelenskyy team, demonstrating the support of Europe in Ukraine, could potentially help to alleviate concerns in kyiv and in other European capitals that Ukrainian risks have made the railway in a peace contract that Trump says that he wants to make Russia.
It was not immediately clear if all or just some of them would participate in reality with Trump.
The president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen announced on X that she would participate in talks, “at the request of President Zelenskyy”.
The secretary general of the NATO military alliance, Mark Rutte, will also participate in the meeting, said his press service.
President Emmanuel Macron’s office announced that the French chief will go to Washington on Monday “alongside President Zelenskyy” although he did not immediately specify that he will be in the meeting.
The German Chancellor Friedrich Merz will also be part of the European group, but the declaration of his office also did not specify that he will be in the talks with Trump.
The grouped journey underlined the determination of European leaders to ensure that Europe has a voice in Trump’s peace attempt, after the US president’s summit on Friday with Putin – to which Zelenskyy was not invited.
