European leaders want to speak to Trump before he meets Putin

Alberto Nardelli, Bloomberg News on Aug 10, 2025

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

European nations are seeking to talk to Donald Trump ahead of the U.S. president’s planned meeting in Alaska with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, according to people familiar with the matter.

The leaders want to speak to him before Friday, when Trump and Putin are due to meet, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

Any conversation would follow an intense weekend of diplomacy between U.S., Ukrainian and European officials, which included meetings in the UK Saturday with Vice President JD Vance and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

EU ambassadors were briefed on the talks on Sunday and the bloc’s foreign ministers are scheduled to convene virtually on Monday. The White House didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment on a potential call.

As part of ongoing discussions between U.S. and Russian officials, Putin is demanding that Ukraine cede its entire eastern Donbas area to Russia as well as Crimea, which his forces illegally annexed in 2014, as a condition to unlock a ceasefire and enter negotiations over a lasting settlement, Bloomberg previously reported.

Such an outcome would likely require Kyiv to give up parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions still under Ukraine’s control and hand Russia a victory that its army couldn’t achieve militarily since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

If the process moves forward, territory would “have to be on the table,” along with security guarantees for Ukraine, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said Sunday on ABC’s "This Week." He suggested that could involve Ukraine acknowledging that it has lost control of some of its territory without formally giving up sovereignty over those regions.

Ukraine and its European allies have been pushing for a ceasefire freezing the current front line as a first step ahead of talks on a more enduring settlement. They also believe in continuing to apply economic pressure on Moscow through sanctions as a way to shift Putin. Trump had threatened sanctions on Russia ahead of a U.S. deadline that expired last Friday, but the president has so far refrained from taking direct action on the Kremlin beyond applying additional tariffs on India over its purchases of Russian oil.

Zelenskyy said over the weekend that Kyiv won’t — and constitutionally can’t — cede territory as European leaders pledged their continued support for Ukraine’s sovereignty.

“We remain committed to the principle that international borders must not be changed by force,” European leaders said Saturday in a joint statement. “The current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations,” they said. The statement was backed by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Finland.

An EU official said the U.S. has been closely involved with the ongoing diplomacy and has shown an interest in being aligned with Europe.

Under the terms of the deal that U.S. and Russian officials have been discussing, Moscow would halt its offensive in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine along the current battle lines.

It’s unclear whether Moscow is prepared to give up any land that it currently occupies, which includes the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe.

Putin has repeatedly insisted that his war goals remain unchanged. They include demands for Kyiv to accept neutral status and abandon its ambition of NATO membership, and to accept the loss of Crimea and the other four eastern and southern Ukrainian regions to Russia.

Parts of Donetsk and Luhansk have been under Russian occupation since 2014, when the Kremlin incited separatist violence shortly after the operation to seize Crimea. Putin declared the four Ukrainian regions to be “forever” part of Russia after announcing that he was annexing them in September 2022, even as his forces have never fully controlled those territories.

_____

(With assistance from Hadriana Lowenkron and Suzanne Lynch.)

_____