Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has already expressed regret for how his meeting with President Donald Trump last week played out and has asked for a do-over, but perhaps eyeing the chance for another incident the British and French leaders may offer to accompany him.
It is possible the French government may have hatched a plan to dispatch both President Emmanuel Macron and Britain’s Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer — both of whom undoubtably have functional working relationships with President Trump — to wingman for Zelensky should the time come he returns to Washington D.C. again.
There are somewhat contradictory signals on this prospect coming out of Paris on Wednesday, and Westminster has not commented either way, however. The plan was first communicated by French government spokesman Sophie Primas on Wednesday morning, who expressed the idea in plain language, saying: “We are considering the possibility that Emmanuel Macron will soon travel to Washington alongside his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer”.
This could happen “in the near future”, she said.
The exact reason for this delegation of leaders was not made explicit, but given the clear disappointment felt in European capitals at how Zelensky’s last meeting went, it isn’t beyond the realm of the possible it is felt chaperoning the Ukrainian next time might bring about a happier result.
But Macron’s camp later walked this back somewhat, without explicitly ruling it out, a spokesman for the French President saying merely that no trip to America is being planned for President Macron “at this stage”, reports Le Figaro.
Britain’s Daily Telegraph cites unnamed European diplomatic sources who are said to have told the paper that the British and French governments are “deeply frustrated” with the outcome of Zelensky’s trip to the White House on Friday. Per the report, London and Paris now think Zelensky has to go much further than simply signing Trump’s mineral deal to persuade the White House to back him in his defence against the Russian invasion again.
Zelensky’s meeting in Washington last week came just one day after Britain’s Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer called on President Trump at the White House. Despite coming from the UK’s left-wing Labour Party, with whom the American President has nothing in common politically and whose senior leaders have repeatedly insulted Trump in the most graphic terms, Starmer has executed a months-long charm offensive on Trump which appears to have paid dividends.
Starmer’s meeting was greeted as a success in London, after it appeared all but certain the United Kingdom would avoid the tariffs that much of the rest of the world is about to experience, and given President Trump seemed satisfied with Starmer’s modest budget increase for British defence.
At the moment, President Zelensky’s priority will be reversing President Trump’s pause on military and intelligence aid to Ukraine. Illuminating the path towards that outcome on Wednesday, U.S. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz said Washington needs reassurance that “both sides are sincerely negotiating towards a partial, then a permanent, peace”.
He said: “”I think if we can nail down these negotiations and move towards these negotiations, and in fact, put some confidence-building measures on the table, then the President will take a hard look at lifting this pause”.
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