Shortly before a meeting between US President Donald Trump and European leaders at the White House on Monday, Aug. 18, a microphone picked up Trump telling French President Emmanuel Macron: “I think [Russian President Vladimir Putin] wants to make a deal for me.”
“You understand that?” continued Trump, as per footage shared by Associated Press. “As crazy as it sounds…”
The US President was also heard to mention a “trilat,” or trilateral summit. Trump later announced that he had begun arranging a meeting between Russia, the US, and Ukraine.
Speaking to NBC News after the meeting, Macron said: “Your president is very confident about his capacity to get this deal done with President Putin, and it’s great.”
However, the two leaders disagree about whether Putin truly wants an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Despite announcing that Russia is ready to accept security guarantees for Ukraine as part of a peace deal, Trump said on Monday that the risk of future Russian aggression against Ukraine is “largely overrated.”
In contrast, Macron told NBC: “If you make any peace deal without security guarantees, Russia will never respect its words, will never comply with its own commitments.”
The French president is a strong advocate for Europe taking a more central role in ending Russia’s war. France and Britain co-chair the “Coalition of the Willing,” a group of (primarily European) countries committed to supporting Ukraine. On July 10, the two countries announced that Paris and London would jointly host the organization’s permanent headquarters.
Leaving the White House on Monday, Macron said that the proposed trilateral summit between Russia, Ukraine, and the US would be held in Europe. “I’m pushing for Geneva,” he added.
During the multilateral meeting between Trump, Zelensky, and European leaders, the French president also emphasized that Europe should have a seat at the table in any future peace negotiations, as per Reuters.
“As a follow up, we would need the quadrilateral meeting, because when we speak about security guarantees, we speak about the whole security of the European continent. This is why we are all united here with Ukraine,” he said.