Volodmyr Zelenskyy will travel to London on Friday for a meeting of the “coalition of the willing” before an expected summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Hungary, amid mounting European disquiet over Ukraine’s exclusion from the Budapest meeting.
Posting on social media, Zelenskyy said the aim of the London visit was to win security guarantees for Kyiv and there would be “many meetings and negotiations in Europe” this week.
There was disappointment at the outcome of last week’s meeting between Zelenskyy and Trump in Washington, where Ukraine’s call for Tomahawk cruise missiles was rebuffed, after a two-hour phone call between Trump and Putin as Zelenskyy was flying to the US.
After the call, Trump once again reverted to echoing Moscow’s maximalist demands, including that Ukraine give up the Donbas region. Reports over the weekend said Trump privately urged Zelenskyy to accept Russia’s terms for ending the war during a fractious White House meeting, warning that Putin had said he would “destroy” Ukraine if it did not agree.
The announcement of the London meeting came as the EU’s chief diplomat, Kaja Kallas, warned that while she believed Trump was “sincere” in his desire for peace, “nothing can come out of these meetings if Ukraine or Europe is not part of it”. She said putting pressure on Ukraine was “not the right approach” to end Russia’s war.
“On Ukraine, the fundamentals have not changed,” Kallas said pointedly. “Ukraine has been ready for an unconditional ceasefire since February but Russia has no genuine interest in peace. We all support President Trump’s efforts to end the war but Putin will only negotiate seriously if he thinks he is losing.”
Among the tools under discussion by the EU to put pressure on Moscow is a new €140bn (£122bn, $163bn) loan for Ukraine, which would be funded by frozen Russian central bank assets, with Kallas saying on Monday there was broad support among member countries.
The European Commission has put forward the plan for the “reparation loan” to keep financing Kyiv and has been seeking to win over Belgium, a major doubter, where the bulk of the Russian assets are held.
EU leaders are set to discuss the loan at a summit in Brussels on Thursday and officials hope they will give a green light for a more detailed legal proposal to be drawn up. “The reparation loan can send a very powerful message to Moscow that it can’t outlast us,” Kallas said.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, reiterated in comments to reporters after a summit of southern EU leaders in Slovenia that Europeans and Ukrainians must be at the table in talks to end the war.
“From the moment they discuss the fate of Ukraine, the Ukrainians should be at the table. From the moment they discuss what impacts the security of Europeans, the Europeans should be at the table,” he said. Zelenskyy has said he would be ready to join Putin and Trump in Budapest but no invitation has so far been forthcoming.
According to the Financial Times, the meeting last week between Trump and Zelenskyy descended at times into a “shouting match”, with the US president “cursing all the time”. Further reporting on the meeting in the Washington Post on Monday described Trump as unmoved by Zelenskyy’s arguments.
“It was pretty much like: ‘No, look guys, you can’t possibly win back any territory,’” an unnamed source told the paper. “‘There is nothing we can do to save you. You should try to give diplomacy another chance.’”
After the Trump meeting, Zelenskyy called for delivery of an additional 25 US Patriot anti-missile batteries amid Russia’s rapidly escalating air war. Speaking in Kyiv on Monday, he said Russia’s frozen assets in the west should be used to buy them.
Ukraine already has some Patriot missile interceptors but they are not enough to protect most of its major cities or energy infrastructure, which has once again come under heavy Russian attack as winter approaches.
Zelenskyy’s two phone calls with Trump and the scheduling of a face-to-face meeting last week had raised hopes in Kyiv and among its allies that Washington could be on the verge of supplying long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine that could allow it to hit targets deep inside Russian territory, including military bases, logistics hubs, airfields and command centres.
However, it became clear that the US president had once again performed an abrupt U-turn after conversation with Putin.
Zelenskyy on Monday characterised the meeting with Trump as “positive” but confirmed that Putin was sticking to the Kremlin’s demand for Ukraine to give up all of the Donbas. “In my opinion, he [Trump] does not want an escalation with the Russians until he meets with them,” Zelenskyy said of the US president’s decision not to approve the supply of Tomahawk missiles.
Russia’s state news reported that the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, were planning to speak soon to lay the groundwork for the Budapest meeting.
Aides close to Zelenskyy said: “Putin doesn’t want to talk about anything with Ukraine and Zelenskyy, except for big concessions … But Putin has to somehow move in such a way as to keep Trump’s mood away from tough moves; that’s his goal. And he’s succeeding.”
Additional reporting by Jennifer Rankin in Brussels
