Trump Talks Ukraine Peace Deal With Macron, Merz And Starmer

President Donald Trump held a conference call with French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Wednesday to discuss the war in Ukraine, a White House official said, as the U.S. president continues to push for an end to the conflict while expressing skepticism that Kyiv stands a chance of coming out ahead.

“The leaders discussed the latest on the ongoing U.S.-led peace talks, welcoming their efforts to achieve a just and lasting peace for Ukraine, and to see an end to the killing,” a spokesperson from Downing Street said after the call. “Intensive work on the peace plan is continuing and will continue in the coming days.”

Trump’s call with the three world leaders came just days after he again cast doubt on Kyiv’s chances of winning its nearly four-year-long war against Russia in an exclusive Monday interview with POLITICO.

The president has wavered in his faith in Ukraine since returning to the White House, telling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a February White House confrontation that he didn’t “have the cards,” before appearing to change his mind in September, advocating for Ukraine to win all of its land back “in its original form.”

In recent weeks, Trump has again shifted his stance, pushing for a peace plan that would see Ukraine cede the entire Donbas region to Russia in exchange for vague American security guarantees. The about-face from the White House — as well as the pressure Trump has applied to Ukraine in search of a deal — has frustrated Kyiv and its allies.

“He’s gonna have to get on the ball and start, uh, accepting things,” Trump told POLITICO’s Dasha Burns. “You know, when you’re losing, ’cause he’s losing.”

Trump cast European countries as “decaying” in his Monday interview, blasting the immigration and trade policies of their leaders while denigrating Europe’s efforts to achieve peace in Ukraine.

“I think they’re weak, but I also think that they want to be so politically correct,” he said, before lamenting, “I think they don’t know what to do. Europe doesn’t know what to do.”

But Yvette Cooper, Britain’s chief foreign minister, still thinks the president has the potential to play a key role in ending the war, she told POLITICO in an interview Wednesday.

“The work that the U.S. is doing to pursue a peace process is incredibly important, and the work that Marco Rubio has been doing as part of those discussions is also hugely important,” she said.