White House National Security Adviser Mike Waltz has announced that French President Emmanuel Macron will travel to Washington next week to meet with Donald Trump and discuss the future of negotiations on Ukraine. He will not be the only European leader to come with these intentions: next week, Trump will also receive British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has been particularly combative in claiming the role of Zelensky and Europe in the negotiations. The official residence of Downing Street had reported on Monday about Starmer's trip, but until now the French leader had not been announced. "Macron and Starmer will come to Washington next week," Waltz said. The news of Macron's trip, of enormous importance due to the escalation of tension between the US and Europe in recent days, came at the end of the second summit that Macron has organised to try to get Europe to react, absent from the negotiating table that Trump and Putin imagine to decide the future of the war in Ukraine. The French president, in fact, met this Wednesday by videoconference with European partners and some NATO allies after the summit of European countries that he convened on Monday in Paris failed to reach an agreement on sending troops to Ukraine .
The meeting was called after complaints from some countries that were not invited to the first meeting. Among others, the leaders of Belgium, Sweden, Finland, Romania, the Czech Republic, Greece, Norway and Canada took part, but not those of the countries that were invited on Monday. Neither Hungary nor Slovakia, two of the most Eurosceptic governments, were present.
The leaders discussed the Ukrainian peace process, which is beginning to be negotiated without Kiev or Brussels, security in Europe and the possibility of sending soldiers to Ukraine when there is a ceasefire, a proposal that has generated reluctance among some European countries. In an interview with the French regional press, Macron pointed out that Europe would not send troops on the ground while the conflict lasts, but rather that it would be a peacekeeping contingent that would serve to stabilise the ceasefire and prevent Russia from attacking again.
The French president also calls for US troops to be part of any future peacekeeping contingent, arguing that the US presence in Ukraine would prevent a new Russian attack. "Since Russia is a nuclear-capable state, this point [the participation of US troops] is key for European partners," says Emmanuel Macron. Trump has said he is in favour of European soldiers guaranteeing peace in Ukraine when negotiations to end the war are successful, but he has not said whether the US would participate.
In the same interview, the French president again warns of the possibility of Putin attacking Europe. "Russia is an existential threat to Europeans, given its actions in various areas. Through its actions on the Polish border, through its cyber attacks on our countries, through attacks like in the United Kingdom, through the manipulation of information and electoral processes like in Romania, through its explicit threats through the ." And he ends with a disturbing warning that makes clear the fear of a military attack on European territory: "Do not think that the unthinkable, even the worst, cannot happen."