By Andrea Shalal, Michel Rose and Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday the United States is close to a minerals deal with Ukraine as he and French President Emmanuel Macron held talks that covered the prospects for ending the Ukraine war amid stark differences on how to proceed.
Trump described the highly anticipated revenue-sharing agreement with Ukraine as “very close” in answering questions from reporters as he and Macron met in the Oval Office. He said he might meet Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy later this week or next week to seal the agreement.
“He may come in this week or next week to sign the agreement, which would be nice,” Trump said of Zelenskiy. He said he would also be meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin at some point.
Macron said Europe was prepared to provide security guarantees to Ukraine, including peacekeepers, in the event of a ceasefire.
Trump said the United States backed the idea of sending European peacekeeping troops and said he had raised the concept with Putin and that Putin would accept it.
Asked if Ukraine should be willing to cede territory to Russia as part of a negotiated end to the war, Trump said, “We’ll see” and noted that talks were just beginning.
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.
After their bilateral talks, the two leaders were to hold 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-old 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 minerals 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.
Zelenskiy last week 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.
(Reporting By Andrea Shalal, Michel Rose and Steve Holland; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Nick Zieminski and Cynthia Osterman)
