European leaders are hoping to leverage Trump and Zelenskyy’s presence to make U.S. promises official.
PARIS — Kyiv and its European allies are eyeing the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos next week as a key venue for Donald Trump to throw his weight behind American commitments on a peace plan for Ukraine.
Trump’s presence at the elite business and political event, along with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is seen as a prime opportunity to get the U.S. president to personally endorse U.S. commitments discussed during a high-level meeting in Paris last week, most critically on what America can offer to deter Russia from further attacks.
Two senior European officials said the big hope was that Trump could commit to those U.S.-backed security guarantees for Ukraine at the Swiss meeting, but two others said the target could be Trump's endorsement of a lower-level economic pact on postwar recovery. In either case, the goal is to lock in engagement from Washington.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who has been leading European efforts to hash out a security guarantee plan jointly with the U.K.’s Keir Starmer, will be attending the global event, according to three officials, joining a flock of European leaders.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will attend along with leaders from Germany, Spain, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland and Serbia. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte will also join.
Starmer's attendance is not yet confirmed, but he would be expected to travel if hopes of clinching a deal are rising, according a U.K. official not authorized to speak publicly. He would go alongside his National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell, seen as one of the most trusted links between the U.S. and Europe in negotiations.
Zelenskyy said Monday he had instructed his negotiating team to “finalize and submit for consideration at the highest level the document on the United States’ security guarantees for Ukraine.”
"We are negotiating with President Trump's representatives about the meeting schedules — our documents are largely ready for signing. We expect that the Davos format this year will be quite effective precisely in terms of our relations with partners and our recovery from Russian strikes," he added in a separate statement out the same day.
The meeting of the so-called Coalition of the Willing in Paris last Tuesday was followed by several bilateral meetings at diplomatic level, according to two diplomats, including with U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Both men’s show of support at the Paris meeting was interpreted as an encouraging sign of U.S. commitment, even if an explicit promise from Washington on a Ukraine backstop was scrapped from the leaders’ final joint statement.
Esther Webber reported from London. Veronika Melkozerova reported from Kyiv and Zoya Sheftalovich reported from Brussels.
Curated by Marcus Thompson
