Trump, Macron hold talks at White House on Ukraine

By Steve Holland

French President Emmanuel Macron joined talks with U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday expected to cover the prospects for ending the Ukraine war amid stark differences on how to proceed.

Macron became the first European leader to visit Trump since he regained power a month ago. He was at the White House for a morning session that lasted an hour and 45 minutes, including both leaders participating in a video conference with other G7 leaders about Ukraine.

Macron, as he left the White House to walk back to the Blair House guest residence, said his welcome from Trump was "very good, very friendly."

"We had the video conference in the Oval office with the G7," he said.

The two leaders later were to hold bilateral talks and then preside over a joint press conference scheduled for 2 p.m. EST.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is to visit Trump later in the week, amid alarm in Europe over Trump's hardening stance toward Ukraine and overtures to Moscow on the three-year conflict.

Macron and Starmer are expected to try to convince Trump not to rush to a ceasefire deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin at any cost, keep Europe involved and discuss military guarantees to Ukraine.

Trump and his team have been negotiating a revenue-sharing agreement with Ukraine to recoup some of the money that the previous Biden administration had sent to Kyiv in the form of weapons to repel Russia.

Trump said over the weekend he believed an agreement would be reached soon.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy last Wednesday rejected U.S. demands for $500 billion in mineral wealth from Ukraine to repay Washington for wartime aid, saying the United States had supplied nowhere near that sum so far and offered no specific security guarantees in the agreement.

Macron is trying to capitalize on a relationship with Trump built during their first presidential terms. He has said agreeing to a bad deal would amount to a capitulation of Ukraine and would signal weakness to the United States' foes, including China and Iran.

"I will tell him: deep down you cannot be weak in the face of President (Putin). It's not you, it's not what you're made of and it's not in your interests," he said in an hour-long question-and-answer session on social media ahead of Monday's visit to the White House.