Surrounded by a “volunteer coalition”, Emmanuel Macron opened the summit for Ukraine in Paris

Thirty allied countries of Ukraine met this Thursday in Paris, for a summit dedicated to “finalizing” “security guarantees” for kyiv, including a possible European military deployment within the framework of a future peace agreement with Russia, still very hypothetical.

“Europe can defend itself. We must prove it, ”said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on social networks at the start of the meeting. This “coalition of volunteers”, according to the expression of Emmanuel Macron, met at the Palais de l’Elysée around the French president, his Ukrainian counterpart and the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

An interview between Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron

All three are maneuvering to make the voice of Ukraine and Europeans heard in the face of spectacular warming between the United States of Donald Trump and Russia by Vladimir Putin. They had an aside with the NATO boss, Mark Rutte, before the summit. Among the leaders of the countries of the European Union and/or NATO present are the Italian Giorgia Meloni, the German Olaf Scholz and the Pole Donald Tusk, but also the Turkish vice-president Cevdet Yilmaz.

After a series of political and military meetings organized since mid-February by Paris and London, the time has come to “draw operational conclusions”, explained the French presidency. Emmanuel Macron said he wanted to “finalize” the “security guarantees that European armies can bring”. Before Thursday’s summit, in which the Americans do not participate, he spoke again with Donald Trump.

“Hollow promises”

“Unlike President Zelensky, Putin showed that he was not a serious actor in these peace talks,” Keir Starmer said on Thursday, accusing him of continuing to inflict “devastating attacks on the Ukrainian people”. “His promises are hollow,” he denounced. For Emmanuel Macron too, Moscow “showed his will to war”, and he is “far too early” to consider lifting of sanctions. It is necessary to “maintain the pressure on Russia through sanctions”, added the president of the European Council Antonio Costa, also present at the top of the Élysée.

On Tuesday, at the end of talks in Saudi Arabia through Washington, an agreement was announced to lead, under conditions, to a truce in the Black Sea and a moratorium on the strikes targeting the energy sites. Ukrainians and Russians accused each other on Wednesday of wanting to have the start of the agreement to the start of the agreement. But Thursday, a Ukrainian official said that there had not been any Russian or Ukrainian strikes against energy sites since March 25.

The return to the White House of Donald Trump, who returned to dialogue with the Russian president and taken up certain elements of the rhetoric of Moscow, rebuilt the cards. Arrived on Wednesday in Washington, the new Russian ambassador to the United States, Alexandre Dartchiev, praised an “window of opportunity”, promising to contribute to the normalization of relations between the two powers. Without waiting for American mediation to reach its ends, most EU and NATO countries want to advance on security guarantees for Ukraine.

“Strategic reserve”

In “first line”, this must go through increased support for the Ukrainian army, Emmanuel Macron detailed on Wednesday evening, announcing new French military aid of two billion euros. In the “second line”, and the most discussed: a “reinsurance force” made up of volunteer European countries, which would be deployed on Ukrainian soil only in the context of a peace agreement.

The French president defended a “pacifist approach”, “as a strategic reserve” to “dissuade any new Russian assault”. These contingents would “not” on the front, “he insisted, even if they would have to” answer “if they were” attacked “. It would not be an observation force of a ceasefire, or an interposition force, he still pleaded, evoking the possibility of a distinct operation “of peacekeeping”, under “United Nations mandate”.

Finally, in “third line”, the support that the Americans would be ready to guarantee to Europeans, necessary for many countries to take the plunge but to which Donald Trump has not yet been formally committed. In recent times, France and the United Kingdom, however, seem to have focused less on a terrestrial deployment, categorically rejected by Vladimir Putin.

On the French side, we insist that “the best security guarantee” for Ukraine is the Ukrainian army itself. While a European intelligence source explained that the air component of a European force would be preponderant. “The deployment of troops is an element of our strategy” of balance of power, “even if at one point we may have to see that we cannot go so far,” said a European military source.