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03-03-2025
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and US President Donald Trump on Saturday and called for calm in an interview following Friday’s clash between the US and Ukrainian leaders at the White House.
The French presidency said Macron had also spoken to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, European Council President Antonio Costa and NATO chief Mark Rutte, on the eve of a meeting of European leaders on Ukraine on Sunday in London.
In an extraordinary Oval Office meeting on Friday, Trump threatened to withdraw support for Ukraine, three years after Russia invaded its smaller neighbor, alarming Europeans who fear a rushed ceasefire would embolden an expansionist Russia.
“I think that beyond the frayed nerves, everybody needs to calm down, show respect and gratitude, so we can move forward concretely, because what’s at stake is too important,” Macron said in an interview with several Sunday newspapers.
Macron and Starmer had taken the lead in Europe to convince Trump not to rush to a ceasefire and to provide security guarantees to Ukraine, presenting him with a plan to deploy peacekeepers in Ukraine during meetings in Washington this week.
Macron said in the interview that Zelenskiy had told him he was willing to “restore dialogue” with the United States, including on a deal giving US access to revenues from Ukraine’s natural resources, but did not say what Trump told him in the call.
“America’s manifest destiny is to be alongside Ukrainians, I have no doubts about that,” he was quoted as saying by La Tribune Dimanche. “I want the Americans to understand that withdrawing support to Ukraine is not in their interest.”
Macron also said that at a planned European Union summit on March 6 he hoped there would be unanimous support for a joint debt plan at the EU level to raise “several hundred billion euros” for European defence.
Hungary’s prime minister has urged the European Union to start direct discussions with Russia on a ceasefire in Ukraine and drop plans for a joint declaration at an extraordinary EU summit next week, saying differences in the bloc “cannot be bridged”.
Under President Donald Trump, the United States has started talks with Russia on ending its war in Ukraine, but without Kyiv or the EU at the table. Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy clashed in a White House meeting on Friday. In a letter to European Council President Antonio Costa dated Saturday, first reported by German daily Welt and seen by Reuters, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said of the EU that there were “strategic differences in our approach to Ukraine that cannot be bridged”.
The European Council did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“I am convinced that the European Union – following the example of the United States – should enter into direct discussions with Russia on a ceasefire and sustainable peace in Ukraine,” Orban, a Trump ally, said in the letter.
He said this approach could not be reconciled with the draft conclusions for next Thursday’s EU summit, set to focus on additional support for Ukraine, European security guarantees and how to pay for European defence needs.
“Therefore, I propose not to attempt adopting written conclusions on Ukraine,” Orban said, alluding to the fact that decisions at EU summits need to be taken unanimously.
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Orban has emerged as a vocal critic of EU sanctions against Moscow and the bloc’s financial and military support for Ukraine. Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico is another EU leader who has pushed for fast peace talks. On Saturday, he called the bloc’s “peace through force” strategy unrealistic and said the necessity of an immediate ceasefire should be in the EU summit’s conclusions. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
