President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is scheduled to arrive in Belgium on Sunday to participate in a video conference with European leaders in Brussels.Benoit Doppagne/Agence France-Presse
This time, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky will arrive in the Oval Office with backup.
An assortment of European prime ministers and presidents will fly in for the meeting on Monday to ensure that a viable, defensible Ukraine survives whatever territorial divisions occur at the bargaining table.
But they are also there to ensure that the transatlantic partnership survives intact. President Trump's abrupt reversal on the crucial issue of achieving a ceasefire before negotiating over land or security guarantees has left many people unsettled, wondering if Mr. Trump was once again swayed by Russian President Vladimir V. Putin.
According to most accounts, European authorities want to guarantee that Mr. Trump has not leaned too far toward Russia and does not try to coerce Mr. Zelensky into a deal that will ultimately lead to Ukraine's breakup. And they want to protect against the possibility that the United States, the core of European security since NATO's inception in 1949, may undermine that interest.
In a phone discussion with Mr. Zelensky on Saturday, Mr. Trump expressed support for U.S. security assurances for Ukraine following the war, a departure from his previous position that Europe should shoulder the responsibility of safeguarding the country, though the specifics were unclear.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Union's executive arm, emphasized the need for security guarantees for Ukraine and respect for its territory during a press conference in Brussels on Sunday. However, she emphasized the importance of "stopping the killing" and called for negotiations between the presidents of Russia, Ukraine, and the United States "as soon as possible."
A senior European official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of upsetting Mr. Trump, described a state of dread among European allies. The diplomat had not witnessed a meeting like the one scheduled for Monday come together so rapidly since shortly before the Iraq War.
The diplomat's primary concern, he said, was avoiding a repeat of the February meeting between Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Trump in front of television cameras at the White House.
At that meeting, Mr. Trump chastised the Ukrainian president, telling him that "you don't have the cards" in the fight — basically instructing a weak foreign country to give in to the demands of a much stronger one. The president did so again on Friday night, after Mr. Putin went back to the Russian Far East, telling a Fox News interviewer that Ukraine would have to recognize Russia as a more "powerful" country, and that power would require Mr. Zelensky to make concessions.
On Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who attended the meetings with Mr. Putin at the American air station outside of Anchorage, contested the notion that the Europeans were arriving as a posse to defend Mr. Zelensky from a recurrence of the February yelling confrontation.
"They're not coming here to keep Zelensky from getting bullied," Mr. Rubio told Margaret Brennan on CBS's "Face the Nation."
"They are coming here tomorrow because we've been working with the Europeans," he added, detailing the several talks the US had held before and following Putin's visit. "We invited them to come."
European officials said on Saturday that Mr. Trump told Mr. Zelensky that he may bring visitors to the meeting, and the White House later issued invites to numerous European leaders.
Whatever the reason for the leaders' decision to change their schedules on short notice, portions of the negotiations will undoubtedly put the Atlantic alliance's cohesion to the test. Mr. Putin's objective extends beyond simply taking part in or all of Ukraine. For nearly 25 years, his greatest desire has been to fracture NATO, separating the European partners from the United States.
As Europe and Ukraine struggle to navigate Mr. Trump's abrupt reversal of policy for resolving a war that has lasted more than three years, Mr. Putin has a new chance to accomplish his dream. The United States and its European partners now look to have separate negotiating agendas.
The differences have been festering for a long time. However, in the weeks preceding the Putin summit, they came out into the open. "We're done with the funding of the Ukraine war business," Vice President JD Vance remarked plainly a week ago.
The Europeans, on the other hand, have committed to continuing their support through a coalition of non-NATO countries. They persuaded Mr. Trump to commit to furnishing weapons as long as the United States was reimbursed for them from European funds.
The message was clear: defending Ukraine was Europe's responsibility, not Washington's. The Trump administration is content to function as a for-profit armaments provider, but it appears to have no responsibility to defend the country, which is not a NATO member.
Mr. Putin masterfully exploited this wedge in Anchorage.
Mr. Trump has already accepted several of Mr. Putin's talking themes, but few from the West. Even before meeting with Mr. Putin, he told the Russian leader that Ukraine's NATO membership application would be placed on hold for the foreseeable future, a position shared by his predecessor, Joseph R. Biden Jr. At several points, he implied that Ukraine had welcomed an attack by applying to NATO and the European Union.
Following the Friday summit with Mr. Putin, he took another step. Mr. Trump and European allies had agreed earlier this week that a cease-fire was required before a peace treaty, but he reversed course and backed with the Russian leader.
"With Trump abandoning the cease-fire but making no reference to the'severe consequences' he threatened, we are at a dangerous moment for the alliance," said James G. Stavridis, a retired Navy admiral who served as NATO's supreme allied commander from 2009 to 2013, when the US still considered Russia a difficult NATO partner.
This is precisely the type of schism that European leaders attempted to avoid following Mr. Trump's return to power in January. NATO's new secretary general, Mark Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister, has paid regular visits to Washington for intimate meetings with President Trump. He was determined to avoid the type of public breach that occurred during Mr. Trump's first term, when the US was on the verge of departing from what he called an "obsolete" alliance.
Mr. Rutte helped organize the revelation in June at a NATO summit that nearly all alliance members had pledged to spend 5% of their GDP on defense. (Of that, 1.5 percent is infrastructure spending, which is only indirectly tied to military spending.) That offered Mr. Trump an early advantage — and proved that, albeit a decade later, Europe was becoming serious about taking responsibility for its own defense. Mr. Trump accepted credit and departed the conference, applauding NATO's changes.
The scheme to buy American weaponry for Ukraine was then established by European politicians, who recognized its attractiveness to the president. The United States could continue to supply Ukraine with armaments, but at no cost to American taxpayers.
The policy appeared to be working a few weeks ago, when Mr. Trump chastised Mr. Putin for engaging in cordial chats while continuing to slaughter civilians. He set deadlines and threatened to put secondary sanctions on countries that bought Russian oil.
For the first time since Mr. Trump's presidency, Washington's strategy, which included the prospect of fresh penalties on Russian oil and gas if there was no cease-fire, appeared to be roughly aligned with Europe's ongoing military and economic pressure. Last Wednesday, European leaders spoke with Mr. Trump, who agreed to stand firm with Mr. Putin that a cease-fire must precede a longer peace negotiation.
That alignment is what blew up in Anchorage.
"It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement," Mr. Trump posted on his social media platform early Saturday.
Mr. Trump's flip-flops contrast with Mr. Putin's determination to continue the battle, even as the number of Russians dead has risen dramatically. "Peace will come when we achieve our goals," he declared in late 2023.
Even then, Mr. Putin was quietly signaling that he was willing to consider a cease-fire provided it froze existing fighting lines, which would require Ukraine to lose control of nearly 20% of its land. His advances were rejected at the time.
But now that the Russian military has made significant achievements, Mr. Putin is no longer interested in a cease-fire.
They feel like they got momentum on the battlefield," Mr. Rubio reported, "and frankly, don't care, don't seem to care very much about how many Russian soldiers die in this endeavor."
"It's a meat grinder," said the employee, "and they just have more meat to grind."
That truth would seem to imply that the timing is not ideal for a peace agreement. Mr. Putin may believe that prolonging the discussions is his best approach.
But when European and American officials meet at the White House on Monday, they will talk more than simply borders. The Europeans must find a way to persuade Mr. Trump to support concrete security assurances for Ukraine, which might include a peacekeeping force to discourage Mr. Putin from renewing the conflict in a few years.
In his chat with European leaders following the Putin summit, Mr. Trump signaled for the first time that he would be willing to join the operation, albeit the presumption is that he would offer US intelligence rather than troops.
On Sunday, after a virtual meeting of European countries calling themselves a "coalition of the willing" — a phrase used in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer issued a statement praising Mr. Trump for his "commitment to providing security guarantees to Ukraine."
That phrase seemed to be designed to bind him to the attempt. The statement reaffirmed that the United Kingdom and other European countries were prepared to "deploy a reassurance force once hostilities have ceased, and to help secure Ukraine's skies and seas and regenerate Ukraine's armed forces."
The U.S. has never been so particular.
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