Ukraine

US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz announced the two key European leaders will have a seat at the negotiating table after EU leaders raised the alarm over Donald Trump’s handling of the war in Ukraine.

Despite the US president’s claims of low support, Zelenskyy’s approval rating reached 57% in February — higher than Trump’s own.

“Everyone who is in the occupied territories is a hostage of the Russian regime,” Ukrainian journalist and human rights activist Maksym Butkevych, who spent over two years in Russian captivity, told Euronews.

Ursula von der Leyen and António Costa have met with Keith Kellogg, the US special envoy for Russia and Ukraine, who has made it clear that Europe would be excluded from the negotiating table.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that Kyiv would not accept any peace agreements made without its participation.

An informal summit in Paris among European leaders concluded without any concrete announcement, as the idea of deploying peacekeeping troops to Ukraine remains highly divisive.

The annual three-day gathering in the Bavarian city saw a whole host of leaders offer, at times, competing visions of the world.

EU Council President António Costa has insisted Europe is “not giving up. We will continue to support Ukraine as an integral part of our project for peace.”

A group of European countries has been quietly working on a plan to send troops into Ukraine to help enforce any future peace settlement with Russia, with the UK and France at the forefront of the effort.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that he will not take NATO membership for Ukraine off the table, but “right now the most influential member of NATO seems to be Putin because he seems able to block NATO decisions.” Zelenskyy also called for the creation of an ‘Armed Forces of Europe’.