French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, Finland’s Alexander Stubb, Poland’s Karol Nawrocki and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni were confirmed by Brussels to have joined. A second call was then held by the European leaders without Zelenskyy and the Americans to discuss the situation.

In a statement, Zelenskyy said that he had a “long and substantive” conversation with Trump, initially one-on-one, before other leaders were invited to take part. “We support President Trump’s proposal for a trilateral meeting between Ukraine, the U.S. and Russia,” he said, adding that he will travel to Washington on Monday to meet with Trump.

“As envisioned by President Trump, the next step must now be further talks including President Zelenskyy, whom he will meet soon,” the group of European countries represented on the call said in a statement. “We are also ready to work with President Trump and President Zelenskyy towards a trilateral summit with European support.”

Writing on Truth Social Saturday morning, Trump said that during the call “it was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up.”

Monday meeting

“President Zelenskyy will be coming to D.C., the Oval Office, on Monday afternoon,” Trump added. “If all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin.”

However, the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, struck a different note. While welcoming Trump’s “resolve to get a peace deal,” she insisted that “the harsh reality is that Russia has no intention of ending this war anytime soon.” Tougher measures must be applied, she said in a statement shared with POLITICO, to force Moscow to the negotiating table.

Yet Starmer has so far managed to publicly embrace Zelenskyy, hugging him on the steps of Downing Street, inviting him to a major summit of EU leaders, and ramping up British support for Ukraine — all without provoking the U.S. president’s ire by directly rebuking him.

The summit of EU leaders convened by Starmer in London at the weekend suggested that the U.K. has not just been welcomed back into the European fold after years of Brexit bad blood — but that Starmer can convincingly claim to be at the center of it.

There’s more to come this week. U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey will travel to the U.S. to meet his counterpart, Pete Hegseth, as part of a sustained diplomatic push to bridge Europe and the U.S.

Unshowy

One perennial complaint from Starmer’s critics on his home turf is that he is boring and uninspiring.

A recently published book on his rise to power claimed that Starmer’s own top adviser Morgan McSweeney complained that he is an “HR manager, not a leader” — while others have lambasted the former top prosecutor’s lawyerly approach to solving problems.

Keir Starmer has so far managed to publicly embrace Volodymyr Zelenskyy, hugging him on the steps of Downing Street, inviting him to a major summit of EU leaders, and ramping up British support for Ukraine. | Pool photo by Toby Melville via Getty Images

Yet that unshowy nature — in contrast to the style of French President Emmanuel Macron — may have been an advantage in getting into Trump’s good books. Starmer’s voice, sometimes pilloried at home, was even branded a “beautiful accent” by the man in the White House.

President Donald Trump, right, meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office at the White House on Feb. 28, 2025. (Mystyslav Chernov/AP)

KYIV — European and NATO leaders announced Sunday that they’ll be joining President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Washington for crucial talks with President Donald Trump, rallying around the Ukrainian leader after his exclusion from Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The remarkable move — with one European leader after another announcing that they’ll be at Zelenskyy’s side when he travels to the White House on Monday — was an apparent effort to ensure that the meeting goes better than the last one in February, when Trump berated the Ukrainian president in a heated Oval Office encounter.

“The Europeans are very afraid of the Oval Office scene being repeated and so they want to support Mr. Zelenskyy to the hilt,” said retired French Gen. Dominique Trinquand, a former head of France’s military mission at the United Nations.

“It’s a power struggle and a position of strength that might work with Trump,” he said in a phone interview.

The European leaders’ presence at Zelenskyy’s side, demonstrating Europe’s support for Ukraine, could potentially help ease concerns in Kyiv and in other European capitals that Ukraine risks being railroaded into a peace deal that Trump says he wants to broker with Russia.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether all or just some of them would be taking part in the actual meeting with Trump.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on X that she will take part in the talks, “at the request of President Zelenskyy.”

The secretary-general of the NATO military alliance, Mark Rutte, will also take part in the meeting, his press service said.

The office of President Emmanuel Macron announced that the French leader will travel on Monday to Washington “at the side of President Zelenskyy” although it didn’t immediately specify that he’ll be in the meeting.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz will also be part of the European group, but the statement from his office likewise didn’t specify that he will be in the talks with Trump.

The grouped trip underscored European leaders’ determination to ensure that Europe has a voice in Trump’s attempted peace-making, after the U.S. president’s summit on Friday with Putin — to which Zelenskyy wasn’t invited.

Skip next section Trump to talk to Putin over Ukraine ceasefire agreement

03/11/2025 March 11, 2025 Trump to talk to Putin over Ukraine ceasefire agreement

US President Donald Trump said he planned to speak to Russia President Vladimir Putin directly after Kyiv signaled that it was open to a 30-day ceasefire in the war with Russia.

Russiamust agree to the ceasefire first.

“It takes two to tango as they say,” Trump said, adding he hoped Putin would agree to the offer.

According to Trump, the Russian leader giving his agreement to the US offer would be “75% of the way.”

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When former KGB officer Alnur Mussayev claimed that US President Donald Trump was recruited as an asset for Moscow in the 1980s, it set off a storm on social media.

In a Facebook post on 20 February, Mussayev said that Trump was enlisted by the KGB in 1987 while on a trip to Moscow, then aged 40, and assigned the code name “Krasnov”.

Trump has not directly responded to Mussayev’s claims. The US president has repeatedly denied having ever worked for Russia.

One thread on X, which has amassed more than 1 million views, refers to Trump as “Krasnov” and brands the US president as a Russian asset. The post goes on to list a series of claims which it presents as purported evidence for this declaration.

Viral social media post claiming Trump is KGB asset X

Meanwhile, other social media users turned to mockery, with one account posting a photo montage of Trump in a KGB outfit, with the political slogan and acronym MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) altered to read “Moscow Agent Governing America”.

One X account makes a photo montage X

Krasnov is a common surname in Russia, derived from the word “krasniy”, which means red.

A flurry of speculative media reports followed, and politicians, including British conservative MP Graham Stuart, repeated his claim, writing in X: “We have to consider the possibility that President Trump is a Russian asset”.

Does the claim carry any weight?

Mussayev did not provide any proof to back up claims that Trump was recruited by the KGB during his visit to Moscow.

Doubts have also been cast over the position Mussayev says he held within the KGB.

In the Facebook post, Kazakhstan’s former spy chief says he worked for the KGB’s 6th Directorate. However, sources including the Encyclopedia of the Central Intelligence Agency, state that this department did not focus on “recruiting foreign intelligence”, but instead on “guarding against economic espionage”.

Euroverify cannot verify claims that Trump is a Russian asset.

Facebook post from former KGB agent Alnur Mussayev Facebook, Alnur Mussayev

The amplification of the claims on social media has likely been intensified by the US president’s foreign policy stance, which has been viewed as favourable to Russia.

Moving away from the Biden administration’s support of Ukraine, the Trump administration has halted military support and intelligence sharing with Kyiv.

That followed a public spat between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a highly contentious meeting in the Oval Office last month.

Trump’s 1987 trip to Moscow

Similar allegations about Trump being a Russian asset have surfaced repeatedly in the past. In 2021, American journalist and author Craig Unger published his book American Kompromat, in which he claims that Trump was recruited by Moscow.

Former KGB agent Yuri Shvets — who had a cover job as a correspondent for the Russian state-owned news agency TASS in Washington during the 1980s — was one of Unger’s key sources for the book. Shvets told Unger that Trump was tapped up in 1987.

Unger told Euronews there is a clear distinction between an agent and an asset.

“While an agent is employed by and intelligence agency and paid, an asset is a reliable friend who will do favours,” he said.

In Unger’s book, Shvets alleged that when Trump opened his first major property development, the Grand Hyatt New York Hotel, in 1980, he purchased 200 television sets from the Joy-Lud electronics store, which was owned by a Soviet emigré.

Shvets claimed the shop was a KGB front and that Trump had already been identified as a potential asset by that point.

In 1987, Trump travelled to Moscow, where Shvets claims that Trump was tapped up by the KGB.

Upon his return, Trump bought three full-page adverts criticising US foreign policy in three major American newspapers at a total cost of $94,801 (€87,150 at time of writing).

In his 1987 book, The Art of the Deal, Trump also mentioned the prospect of inaugurating a Trump building in Moscow.

“Trump had previously provided tabloid-fodder for the American press, but when he returned from Russia, he began portraying himself as a savvy foreign policy analyst,” Unger told Euronews.

The 2019 Mueller report: A dig into Trump’s Russia ties

Trump’s ties with Russia were investigated in the 2019 Mueller report, which was commissioned by the US Justice Department and examined Russian interference in the 2016 US elections.

While “links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign” were identified, the report did not “establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

“I never worked for Russia,” said Trump when questioned about his ties to the country by a reporter in 2019.

“It’s a disgrace that you even ask that question. It’s all a big fat hoax”, he added.