In a meeting at the White House, President Trump refused to call the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, while the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, strongly said that “the aggressor is Russia.”
President Donald Trump and the president of France Emmanuel Macron showed friendship on Monday at their first meeting since the inauguration last month, but despite all hugs and squeeze from effusive hands, they could not hide the growing division between United States and Europe because of the Ukraine War.
Gathered on the third anniversary of the large -scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the two leaders seemed determined to avoid a clear break while exchanging compliments during a cordial meeting in the White House. But they discrete significantly about the causes of war, the role of each part in the conflict and its possible resolution.
The session occurred while the United States and France maintain a strong division in the United Nations on a resolution that condemns Russian aggression. While Europe and most of the world were put on the side of Ukraine, the Trump government dismitted together with Russia, North Korea and Belarus, placing the United States in a field where it rarely or has never been throughout The History of the United Nations.
The growing division was evident in the capitals on both sides of the Atlantic. While the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Brandembourg’s door in Berlin and the buildings of the European Union in Brussels illuminated with the blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag in solidarity, the White House did not make any effort to demonstrate its support . Many world leaders moved to kyiv to support Ukrainian leaders, in the meantime Trump focused on reaching an agreement to claim the country’s natural resources as a reward for military aid.
“I think a lot has been made progress,” Trump said about his efforts to negotiate peace with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “We have held very good conversations with Russia. We have held very good conversations with others, and we are trying to end war with Russia and Ukraine. ”
Trump also said he could go to Moscow if a peace agreement was reached, which predicted that it could happen in a matter of weeks. That would make him the first American president visited by Russia in more than a decade and would be considered a great help for Putin, who faces an international arrest warrant for war crimes.
But, although Macron called the president “Dear Donald” and repeatedly used words such as “Friendship” and “Shared Agenda”, smoothly and courtesy used a different tone from Trump’s when he talked about the war.
“This peace should not mean a surrender of Ukraine,” said the French president during a joint press conference in the East Room of the White House. “It should not mean a high fire without guarantees. This peace must allow Ukrainian sovereignty. ”
Trump did not mention the guarantees or Ukrainian sovereignty, refused to call Putin dictator and falsely said that the United States had spent in the war the triple that Europe. Macron, careful not to cause Trump, made it clear that Russia was the culprit of war, not Ukraine, and corrected the president’s claims about European aid.
When he spoke with the journalists in the Oval Office before his Joint Press Conference, Trump, which last week said that Ukraine had “started” the war and described the president chosen by the Ukrainian people, Volodimir Zelenski, of “dictator without elections ”, He refused to use the term to refer to Putin, who has governed as an autocrat for a quarter of a century. “I don’t use those words lightly,” Trump said.
Macron, on the contrary, gave voice to the opinion agreed in Europe and, until now, in the United States that Moscow is guilty of war. “It is Russia’s responsibility, because the aggressor is Russia,” said the French president.
At one point, Trump repeated the false statement that the United States had spent US $ 350 billion to help Ukraine and “had not obtained any of it”, while Europe had only spent US $ 100 billion. In fact, according to the Kiel Institute for the world economy, Europe has allocated US $ 138 billion to the war effort, compared to 119,000 million contributed by the United States.
Trump also mistakenly characterized the nature of European aid. “Europe is lending money to Ukraine,” he said. “They return the money.”
Macron, who at the beginning of the meeting had spoken in French through an interpreter, intervened quickly in English and put his hand on Trump’s arm to correct him.
“No, in fact, to be Franco, we pay,” Macron said. As in the case of the United States, he said, there has been a mixture of subsidies, loans and loan guarantees. “We provide real money, to be clear,” he said.
Trump, smiling, put face of skepticism and stirred his hand as if he did not believe it.
Trump, who failed to negotiate the end of the war in 24 hours or before his investiture, as he had promised in the campaign, said that the conversations he had started with Putin could end the war “in a matter of weeks, if we are intelligent ” He added: “If we are not intelligent, we will continue and lose young people.”
The president emphasized his requirement for Ukraine to give up hundreds of billions of dollars in mining rights to return US military aid, to which Zelenski has resisted. However, Treasury Secretary Scott Besent said that US and Ukrainian negotiators were “very close” to an agreement, in the “last yarda”, and Trump said that Zelenski could go to Washington to sign it this week or the following.
Trump’s return to power is shocking relations with European allies, since it threatens to impose tariffs on their consumer goods, requires that they increase military spending even above a previous objective and breaks with them in relation to Ukraine. The relations lit after a speech in Munich of Vice President JD Vance, who suggested that the greatest threat to the security of European nations was not Russia or China, but its own policies in the field of politics and culture.
Macron has organized two European leaders meetings to formulate a plan to deal with some United States that seem to be changing their support for their traditional allies. But then he hastened to go to Washington for a meeting organized in a hurry with Trump, in order to strengthen the president in negotiations on the destination of Ukraine.
His visit is part of a bombing of European trips to Washington these days to influence the new government. The president of Poland, Andrzej Doube, attended the Constitution of Conservative Political Action on Washington’s outskirts on the weekend to meet Trump, who made him wait more than an hour. And the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, plans to visit the White House on Thursday.
Trump and Macron have a long and complicated story. On Monday, when the president greeted Macron at the entrance of the West Wing similar during Trump’s first mandate. During their subsequent session in the Oval Office, smiles lean, they praised each other and shake their hand in a jocular tone. At the end of the subsequent press conference, Macron made sure to hug Trump.
Macron, who last week warned that “you cannot be weak against President Putin,” he said he had cut his own contacts with the Russian president after the slaughter of Ukrainian civilians in Bucha in 2022. But he quickly added that he approved the new effort Trump because his choice presented “a new context.”
At the same time, he stressed that any agreement with Russia must “be verified and verified” and repeatedly referred to the fire, called Minsk agreements, which were signed and then broke after the original invasion of Ukraine by Russia In 2014. Trump, in response, said that Russia was interested in “reaching an agreement”, but did not mention what Moscow should renounce or what Security guarantees should be negotiated.
“I really think he wants to reach an agreement,” Trump said referring to Putin. “I may be wrong, but I think he wants to reach an agreement.”
He added that he had spoken with Putin about the possibility of deploying European peace forces in Ukraine to supervise any high fire and that the Russian president would agree.
Macron, one of the main promoters of the idea of a European force that maintains peace, said he agrees with Trump in which Europe must assume more responsibilities. As for the United States, he added that “Americans will be there in solidarity.”
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That Putin really accepts the presence of foreign soldiers in Ukrainian territory could be an important factor in any negotiation. In an interview published on Monday, Putin highlighted the economic benefits of an approach to the United States, taking advantage of Trump’s interest in the financial aspect of international diplomacy.
As for Trump, the Russian leader praised him, describing him as someone who “does not just say what he thinks, but says what he wants.”