{"id":43428,"date":"2025-09-04T16:05:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T16:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/43428\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T16:05:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T16:05:14","slug":"thirty-western-leaders-meet-zelenskiy-in-paris-to-discuss-post-truce-ukraine-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/43428\/","title":{"rendered":"Thirty western leaders meet Zelenskiy in Paris to discuss post-truce Ukraine \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The leaders of about 30 western countries are holding talks in Paris on Thursday with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy<\/a> over security guarantees for Kyiv in the event of a peace deal<\/a> with Russia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They are hoping to do enough to persuade the United States to back their efforts.<\/p>\n

The summit, both in person and by video-link, of the \u2018coalition of the willing\u2019 brings together leaders, including Europe\u2019s biggest countries, but also the likes of Australia, Canada and Japan.<\/p>\n

Members of the coalition, which does not include the US, have talked for months at various levels to define their prospective military support for Ukraine to help deter Russia from attacking it again if and when there is a final truce \u2013 still a remote prospect.<\/p>\n

But those efforts have stalled as governments have said any European military role would need its own US security guarantees as a \u201cbackstop\u201d. President Donald Trump has made no explicit commitment to provide those.<\/p>\n

His special envoy Steve Witkoff met French, British, German, Italian and Ukrainian senior diplomats ahead of the summit, before briefly attending the opening session.<\/p>\n

Mr Zelenskiy is expected to have a one-on-one meeting with Mr Witkoff.<\/p>\n

French president Emmanuel Macron said alongside Mr Zelenskiy in Paris on Wednesday that the coalition leaders would endorse plans for security guarantees drawn up by their militaries.<\/p>\n

Two European officials said the \u201ctechnical\u201d plans had been finished, without going into detail on what that actually meant.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are ready, us Europeans, to provide security guarantees to Ukraine for when there is a signed peace,\u201d Mr Macron said.<\/p>\n

The two European officials said the aim would be to send a political signal to Mr Trump. This would highlight the lack of progress toward direct peace talks between Russian president Vladimir Putin and Mr Zelenskiy since Mr Trump hosted the Russian leader in August, and prod Mr Trump to raise pressure on Moscow now.<\/p>\n

Having rolled out the red carpet in Alaska, Mr Trump on Wednesday accused Mr Putin of conspiring with China and North Korea after the three countries\u2019 leaders staged a show of unity in Beijing at a lavish commemoration of the end of the second World War.<\/p>\n

Nato secretary general Mark Rutte said on Wednesday he expected that the meeting would pave the way for more intense discussions with Washington on what guarantees it could provide.<\/p>\n

Mr Putin told Kyiv on Wednesday there was a chance to end the war in Ukraine via negotiations \u201cif common sense prevails\u201d, an option he said he preferred, although he was ready to end it by force if that was the only way.<\/p>\n

Western officials say the key element of the guarantees will be continuing strong support for Ukraine\u2019s armed forces.<\/p>\n

But they were also expected to include an international force to assist and reassure Kyiv, based both in Ukraine and in neighbouring countries, even though Russia is emphatically opposed to any foreign deployment in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Diplomats say big differences remain among allies on the issue. A German government source said Berlin was aware that politically it would be difficult to refuse, but militarily it would be difficult given troop commitments for Lithuania.<\/p>\n

Nato\u2019s Mr Rutte said Russia\u2019s views were irrelevant.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy are we interested in what Russia thinks about troops in Ukraine, it\u2019s a sovereign country. Russia has nothing to do with this,\u201d he said at a conference in Prague before joining the summit on Thursday. \u201cI think we really have to stop making Putin too powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n

European leaders have made clear such a force will only be feasible with US backing \u2013 something Mr Trump promised last month in general terms. But Washington has yet to spell out what it is willing to contribute.<\/p>\n

Some of the leaders will call Mr Trump after the summit, the French presidency said. \u2013 Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The leaders of about 30 western countries are holding talks in Paris on Thursday with Ukrainian president Volodymyr…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,550,7,8,2264,2267,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-43428","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-latest-news","14":"tag-latestnews","15":"tag-main-news","16":"tag-mainnews","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-russia","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-topstories","21":"tag-ukraine-crisis","22":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy","23":"tag-world","24":"tag-world-news","25":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}