Trump to Europe: Overseeing a Ukraine cease-fire would be your job
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The outlines of President-elect Donald Trump’s initial efforts to end the war in Ukraine from his visit to Europe last week are starting to emerge for the first time. The main takeaway: Europe would have to shoulder most of the burden of supporting Kyiv with troops to oversee a cease-fire and weapons to deter Russia.
At a meeting in Paris on Dec. 7, Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron that he doesn’t support Ukrainian membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, but that he wanted to see a strong, well-armed Ukraine emerge from any cessation of fighting, according to officials briefed on the meeting. Trump said that Europe should play the main role in defending and supporting Ukraine and that he wanted European troops present in Ukraine to monitor a cease-fire, according to the officials.
He hasn’t ruled out U.S. support for the arrangement, although no U.S. troops would be involved, the officials said.
Trump also pushed the Europeans to do more to get the Chinese to press the Kremlin to end the conflict, according to a person briefed on the meeting. They discussed using tariffs on China as a bargaining chip, if Beijing doesn’t agree to do so. Trump has long said that he wants to bring a swift end to the three-year war but has given few details in public about how he plans to achieve it.
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