French President Emmanuel Macron said the coming fortnight will be decisive for finalizing security guarantees for Ukraine, as European and American leaders follow up on high-level talks with Kyiv and Moscow.
French President Emmanuel Macron declared the next two weeks "critical" for defining security guarantees for Ukraine, following high-stakes peace talks on Monday. “There is all the work that needs to be done beforehand on security guarantees. The next 15 days are absolutely critical for us to finalize the work with the Americans and give these security guarantees substance,” Macron said in an interview with French broadcaster LCI.
Macron and several other European leaders interrupted their summer vacations to join Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for talks at the White House, which followed U.S. President Donald Trump's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska.
In interviews with French and American media, Macron praised Trump’s decision to provide Ukraine with a “very good security guarantee.” “The big change in recent days is that he has acknowledged the need to guarantee Ukraine's security," Macron told Paris Match.
The precise nature of the security guarantee has yet to be defined. Macron told LCI, “the British, French, Germans, Turks and others are ready to carry out operations, not at the frontline, not provocatively, but reassurance operations in the air, at sea and on land."
On Tuesday, Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will co-chair a videoconference of the Coalition of the Willing, a group of Western countries supporting Ukraine, to follow up on the Washington meeting and continue work on security guarantees.
Macron cautioned against a quick peace deal, warning against taking the Kremlin at its word. In his LCI interview, he described Russia as a "destabilizing force" and "a predator, an ogre at our door." He told NBC News, “We want to make sure that this peace, and so this deal will be something which will allow the Ukrainians to recover their country and live in peace, to be sure the day after this peace deal that they will have sufficient deterrence power not to be attacked again, and to be sure for the Europeans that they will live in peace and security."
While Trump is pushing for both a bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy and a trilateral summit including himself, Macron suggested Geneva as a potential host city, citing its history as a neutral venue for international negotiations.
Macron said that Putin’s willingness—or refusal—to take part in a trilateral meeting would “clear up ambiguities” and reveal whether the Russian leader was serious about making peace.
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