European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are to meet in Paris on Thursday in a new effort to pile pressure on Vladimir Putin after he vowed Russia will fight on in Ukraine if no peace deal is reached.
Frustration has been building in the West over what leaders say is the Russian president’s unwillingness to strike a deal to end Moscow’s three-and-a-half-year invasion of Ukraine.
The summit, to be co-chaired by the leaders of France and the UK, aims to firm up plans on security guarantees for Ukraine if or when there is a ceasefire, and get a clearer picture of US involvement.
However, Russia has heaped scorn on such assurances, and Putin himself has said Moscow is willing to “resolve all our tasks militarily” in the absence of an agreement.
“We are ready, we the Europeans, to offer the security guarantees to Ukraine and Ukrainians the day that a peace (accord) is signed,” French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday evening, speaking alongside Zelensky.
Macron said the details of the guarantees were “extremely confidential” but the “preparation was completed” at an earlier meeting of defence ministers.
European leaders have been tight-lipped about the nature of the guarantees, which are expected to include the deployment of European troops to Ukraine, training and “backstop” support from the United States.
Zelensky, for his part, said he was confident Kyiv’s allies would help “increase pressure on Russia to move towards a diplomatic solution”.
But he also added: “Unfortunately, we have not yet seen any signs from Russia that they want to end the war.”
Hours before the talks were due to begin, Russia’s foreign ministry said the notional guarantees for Ukraine were “absolutely unacceptable”.
“They are not guarantees of Ukraine’s security, they are guarantees of danger to the European continent,” ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on the sidelines of an economic forum in Russia’s far east.
She added that Russia would not consider the deployment of foreign troops in Ukraine “in any format”.
– ‘Alliance between Europe and US’ –
In an interview with French magazine Le Point published ahead of the summit, Zelensky said European security guarantees “might not be enough” to prevent Putin from starting a new war.
“We need an alliance between Europe and the United States,” he said.
The summit will be followed by phone talks with US President Donald Trump, to begin at 1200 GMT, and then a 1300 GMT press conference.
The gathering takes place following Putin’s high-profile trips to China and the United States.
Speaking earlier Wednesday in Beijing, where he attended a massive military parade alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping, Putin hailed his forces’ progress in Ukraine.
He said Russian troops were advancing on “all fronts” and had hobbled Ukraine’s army so much it could no longer mount an offensive.
In unprecedented scenes, Putin was pictured shaking hands and chatting with Xi and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as they walked down a red carpet by Tiananmen Square.
Last month Trump rolled out a red carpet for Putin in Alaska but those talks yielded no breakthrough.
Trump has indicated the United States could back up any European peacekeeping plan, but would not deploy US soldiers to Ukraine.
– ‘War criminal’ –
European leaders have been growing exasperated with Putin, sharpening their criticism and warning that the Ukraine war could last for many more months.
“Putin is a war criminal,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on X on Tuesday.
“He is perhaps the most severe war criminal of our time that we see on a large scale. We must be clear about how to deal with war criminals: leniency is out of place here.”
Macron last month called Putin “an ogre at our gates”, while his Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu said Russia could continue to wage its war against Ukraine “for as long as it can”.
“In a Soviet KGB culture, buying time and deceiving one’s partners and adversaries is part of a well-known Russian strategy,” Lecornu told French daily Le Parisien in a recent interview, referring to the main security agency of Moscow’s predecessor state.
