By Andrea Shalal, Michel Rose and Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin accepts the idea of Europe sending peacekeepers to Ukraine as part of a ceasefire agreement, and French President Emmanuel Macron said Europe is ready to help.
Trump and Macron sketched out efforts to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war in Oval Office talks after they took part in a video conference with other G7 leaders to mark the third anniversary of the start of the Ukraine war.
“Yeah, he will accept that,” Trump said about Putin’s acceptance of a peacekeeping force. “I specifically asked him that question. He has no problem with it.”
Macron, the first European leader to visit Trump since he regained power a month ago, said Europe has a role to play in providing security guarantees. He said first a truce needs to be negotiated and then a peace agreement backed up by security guarantees.
“We are ready and willing to provide those security guarantees, which could perhaps include troops, but they would be there to maintain peace,” Macron said as he and Trump took questions from reporters in the Oval Office after a morning of meetings.
“They would not be along the front lines. They would not be part of any conflict. They would be there to ensure that the peace is respected,” he said.
Trump said the United States is “very close” to a minerals deal with Ukraine and that he might meet Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy later this week or next week to seal the agreement.
“He may come in this week or next week to sign the agreement, which would be nice,” Trump said of Zelenskiy. He said he would also be meeting Putin at some point.
Trump and his team have been negotiating a minerals revenue-sharing agreement with Ukraine to recoup some of the money that the previous Biden administration had sent to Kyiv in the form of weapons to repel Russia.
Zelenskiy last week rejected U.S. demands for $500 billion in mineral wealth from Ukraine to repay Washington for wartime aid, saying the United States had supplied nowhere near that sum so far and offered no specific security guarantees in the agreement.
Asked if Ukraine should be willing to cede territory to Russia as part of a negotiated end to the war, Trump said, “Well, we’re going to see” and noted that talks were just beginning.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is to visit Trump later in the week, amid alarm in Europe over Trump’s hardening stance toward Ukraine and overtures to Moscow on the conflict.
Macron and Starmer are expected to try to convince Trump not to rush to a ceasefire deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin at any cost, keep Europe involved and discuss military guarantees to Ukraine.
Macron is trying to capitalize on a relationship with Trump built during their first presidential terms. He has said agreeing to a bad deal would amount to a capitulation of Ukraine and would signal weakness to the United States’ foes, including China and Iran.
(Reporting By Andrea Shalal, Michel Rose and Steve Holland; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Nick Zieminski and Cynthia Osterman)
