Reuters: Trump Made Proposal At Meeting With Macron And Zelensky
- 11.12.2024, 11:24
The Ukrainian president came up with his proposal.
US President-elect Donald Trump, during a meeting in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said he wants an immediate ceasefire and talks to end the war.
The three leaders, who talked for 35 minutes without advisers, did not discuss specific details of any vision for peace, Reuters reports on December 11 with a reference to four sources.
President Volodymyr Zelensky used his first meeting with Donald Trump since the US election to explain the need for the West to provide Ukraine with security guarantees if the Russia-Ukraine war is resolved through negotiations, two sources familiar with the discussions told Reuters.
The trilateral meeting provided some early clues as to how negotiations on ending the conflict might play out, although the process that would involve Russian President Vladimir Putin is fraught with difficulty and the role of the United States as yet unclear.
Trump behaved in a friendly, respectful and open manner and appeared to be in listening mode, one of the sources said.
Neither Trump nor officials close to him dealing with Ukraine have been forthcoming on how exactly they envisage a solution to the war and to Ukraine's insistence that it has to receive security guarantees as part of any settlement, the publication noted.
“Some key points were mentioned during the meeting – for example, it was said that peace needs guarantees because a ceasefire alone isn't enough, Putin could break it again, as he has done before, without proper guarantees,” a source in the Ukrainian president's office told Reuters.
Asked how that was received, the source said, referring to Trump, “He's thinking about all the details.”
Several officials close to Trump have said he has geared his meetings to building a personal rapport, which is key to how he conducts diplomacy, and that he will ultimately make the call on how to proceed.
Macron and Zelensky were on the same page at the Paris meeting, but were careful not to seem like they were cornering Trump, one official told Reuters.
The French leader — who over the years has developed a knack for using personal relationships to advance his diplomatic efforts — and Zelensky worked in synergy to outline how they viewed the situation, while underscoring that without U.S. support it would be very difficult for Kyiv, the official summarized.