European leaders will on Wednesday use a virtual meeting with Donald Trump to try to ensure the US president truly understands what is at stake for the continent before he meets Vladimir Putin later this week, but experts are doubtful they will succeed. Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance, will join a meeting convened by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the early afternoon (central European time) that will also include the leaders of Finland, France, Italy, Poland, the UK, the NATO Secretary-General and the chiefs of the European Commission and Council. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will also take part from Berlin where he will meet with Merz. The German Chancellor, France's Emmanuel Macron and British premier Keir Starmer will then chair a meeting of the so-called coalition of the willing, scheduled to start at around 16:30 CET, according to media reports. "We welcome the efforts of President Trump to reach peace for Ukraine, a peace that is just and lasting and respects sovereignty and territorial integrity. And in this sense, we are working with Ukraine to make sure that this is kept in mind in the meeting on Friday," a spokesperson for the European Commission told reporters on Tuesday. "What we're doing now is reiterating our views on what a just and lasting peace for Ukraine should be and that any decision on Ukraine can be taken with Ukraine at the table," Arianna Podestà added. Zelensky is not expected to attend the summit to be held in Alaska on 15 August between the US and Russian presidents. Trump told reporters on Monday that "out of respect I'll call him first" after the talks wrap up. The announcement last week that a summit would be held has led to a flurry of diplomatic contact in Europe over fears Ukraine and the wider continent's interests will be trampled on in a bid for a quick deal. EU leaders - bar Hungary - reiterated in a joint statement on Tuesday that no deal can be made without Ukraine at the table. They also wrote that "international borders must not be changed by force", thereby rejecting Putin's ceasefire proposal to trade the Ukrainian territories of Donetsk and Luhansk. "Unable to bring much to the negotiations, European leaders have been relegated to the margins with the EU seen by Trump and Putin as largely irrelevant," Dr Neil Melvin, Director of International Security at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told Euronews. "European leaders are able to inform Trump of their ideas, and the US will brief them on the summit outcomes, but Europe is in the position that the Ukraine conflict outcomes are being negotiated over its head and the continent's leadership is essentially an observer," he added. The call with Trump and Vance is a last-ditch attempt before the summit to get that point across before the Arctic meet-up. One of the central issues for Europeans, Ian Bond told Euronews, is that Trump appears to be treating a possible peace deal in Ukraine "like a real estate transaction". "He does not understand that some of the territory in the east of Ukraine that Putin covets would be vital to Ukraine's defence when (and it is 'when' not 'if') Russia resumes its aggression and tries to take more Ukrainian territory," the deputy director of the Centre for European Reform (CER) added. Additionally, recent comments by Trump "showed that he still blames Zelensky for the war, even though Russia was the aggressor." Vance's participation is also "significant", Majda Ruge, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) told Euronews, "because his position is further away from the one Europeans are hoping to get President Trump to agree to". The US vice-president told Fox News on Sunday that the US is "done with the funding of the Ukraine war business. We want to bring about a peaceful settlement to this thing". He also said that any deal was "not going to make anybody super happy" and called on Europe "to step up and take a bigger role in this thing, and if you care so much about this conflict you should be willing to play a more direct and a more substantial way in funding this war yourself". The EU and its member states are the biggest contributors to Ukraine's defence through their financial, humanitarian and military assistance to the war-torn country since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion in late February 2022. "The US Vice-President is keen to improve US relations with Russia and sees a need for compromise with Russian President Putin. He is therefore more likely to push for a position that involves greater concessions from Ukraine than what President Zelensky or the European leaders would like to see," Ruge added. The European leaders present in the meeting with Trump will then brief their counterparts involved in the so-called coalition of the willing. The group, led by France and the UK, was formed back in March following the initial thawing of relations between Washington and Moscow to discuss the security guarantees Europe could offer in the event of a peace deal. This will be their seventh meeting. They have so far agreed to the creation of a 'Multinational Force Ukraine' following reconnaissance visits to Ukraine by military chiefs and to "bolster Ukraine's ability to return to peace and stability", and to the establishment of a headquarters in Paris. "So far, the coalition of the willing has not been particularly willing to act. Its focus has been on preparing to support a peace settlement that was never likely as long as Putin's war aims were unchanged," Bond opined. "But what Ukraine needs at present is a coalition willing to help it before the cessation of hostilities – to put enough pressure on Russian forces that Putin is incentivised to stop fighting and make concessions. There is no sign of such a coalition at present," he added. The grouping itself, Dr Melvin said, "is a sign that the main institutions of the Euro-Atlantic community are now unable to deliver the political and security solutions that Europe needs" due to the fact that the EU and NATO run primarily on consensus. Whether Europe's efforts to rally Trump to their cause are fruitful will likely only be observed in Alaska on Friday. Their exchange will have been successful if Trump "stands up to Putin in Alaska, strengthens Zelensky's position militarily, and joins the Europeans in increasing sanctions pressure on Russia," Bond said, cautioning however that "it seems unlikely that the meeting will achieve any of those outcomes" given recent comments from US officials. "Maybe the best we can hope for is that Putin over-reaches so that even Trump finds it impossible to accept his proposals," he added. — Euronews
