Macron Tries to Warn Trump Against 'Weak' Ukraine Deal

Macron has repeatedly stressed the need for security guarantees to ensure Moscow delivers on its promises this time around, and said any agreement must be “verified.”

“We want peace. He wants peace,” Macron said of his American counterpart, standing next to Trump. “We want peace, a quick peace, but we don’t want a weak agreement.”

“This peace must not mean the capitulation of Ukraine,” said the French visitor, who has brought his own country into an impassable political crisis.

Trump, meanwhile, made no mention of security guarantees when it was his turn to speak at a joint news conference on Monday. Instead, he portrayed himself as a master negotiator seeking an agreement.

“I’ve talked to President Putin, and my people deal with him all the time, and his people in particular, and they want to get something done,” Trump said from the East Room. “I mean, that’s what I do. I make deals. My whole life is deals. All I know is deals. And I know when somebody wants to make a deal and when they don’t.”

Macron had hoped to use his long-standing personal relationship with Trump to put pressure on Europe and Ukraine after a week of severe deterioration in transatlantic ties, CNN notes. And the two presidents did seem friendly, exchanging kind words and smiles throughout their time together. Trump heaped praise on Macron for overseeing the rapid restoration of Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral after a fire nearly destroyed it.

Macron was also keen to highlight areas of agreement. Repeating a position he has held for months, he acknowledged that Europeans must take more responsibility for their own security, something on which the French leader agrees in principle with Trump.

But their differences were still fairly clear, and by the end of the day, Trump did not seem to have budged significantly on his positions on who was responsible for the conflict in Ukraine or whether Europe had done enough to support Kyiv.

During a meeting between the two leaders on Monday, the UN Security Council, with the support of Moscow and without the support of the US's European allies, adopted a resolution that did not call Russia an "aggressor," CNN reports.

And in a singular moment that underscored the tense dynamics of talks between the French and American presidents on Monday, a presumptuous Macron tried to lecture his American counterpart on the nature of European support for Ukraine, interrupting Trump as he spoke to suggest that he was distorting the facts.

“Just so you understand, Europe lends money to Ukraine. They get their money back,” Trump began, preparing to lay out the case for a new deal that would provide Ukraine with revenue from its mineral extraction.

It was at this point that Macron grabbed Trump's arm to intervene.

"No, actually, to be honest, we paid. We paid 60% of the total work. It was like in the US: loans, guarantees, grants," he said, as Trump smiled sadly.

Trump has signaled his openness to deploying a European peacekeeping force to Ukraine, a plan he is expected to learn more about later this week when he hosts British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. He even said he had discussed the idea with Vladimir Putin, and that the Russian president was also open to the idea.

Macron later described the Europeans as acting as a “guarantor force” in Ukraine and the Americans as acting “in solidarity,” although it was clear that the precise contours of the plan had yet to be worked out.

Trump also said he was ready to meet soon with Zelensky to finalize a deal that would allow us access to Ukraine's mining revenues, a development Macron welcomed.

“It looks like we're getting very close,” Trump said.

The US president was adamant that the conflict in Ukraine could end within weeks, refused to call President Vladimir Putin a "dictator" - a word he has used to describe the Ukrainian leader - and reiterated his goal of visiting Moscow at some point in the future, CNN notes.

Before Trump and Macron even began their formal talks, they had already spent more than two hours together at a virtual meeting of the Group of Seven. The G7 gathering was tense. Ahead of the talks, U.S. officials resisted including a reference to “Russian aggression” in the leaders’ final statement. Trump also renewed his push to allow Russia to join the group of industrialized nations, reviving a dispute he had in 2019 with Macron and other leaders at a summit the French president hosted in Biarritz.

But after their Monday morning meeting, both leaders said the two-hour virtual summit had been a success. After leaving the West Wing on foot, Macron called the talks “perfect.”

For the French leader, whose complicated history with Trump began in 2017, Monday's meetings were aimed at using what he sees as a unique understanding with the American president to advance the interests of Ukraine and Europe, CNN said.

Last week, Macron said, with some hope, that he believed Trump had great respect for him. “I respect him,” Macron said, “and I believe he respects me.”

How important that was in Monday's talks was not entirely clear, CNN reports.

Ahead of the meeting, Trump lamented what he said were weak efforts by Macron and Starmer to end the Ukraine conflict, insisting they had “done nothing” despite both countries’ significant contributions to Ukraine’s war effort.

Macron has already used his position to pressure Trump to support Ukraine, arranging a surprise three-way meeting in Paris last December between himself, Trump, and Zelensky over the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral. Trump was respectful and “listened carefully” during the meeting, according to one official, as Zelensky laid out the need for security guarantees for Ukraine after the fighting ends. Macron tried to explain to Trump that a defeat for Ukraine would make the United States look weak to its other rivals, namely China. Two months later, those talks appear to have left little impression on Trump, who last week lashed out at Zelensky and suggested that Ukraine started the conflict, CNN reports.

Starmer, who meets Trump on Thursday, is expected to brief his US counterpart on a plan underway to deploy up to 30,000 European peacekeepers to Ukraine, hoping to demonstrate Europe's commitment to shouldering more of the burden of providing security for its client country in future. He may also set a date by which he wants the UK to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP.