Britain and France have promised to muster a “coalition of the willing” to secure a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia. Now comes the acid test for Europe: How many countries will step up, and does that even matter, given Russia’s rejection of such a coalition as part of any settlement?
Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain left those questions unanswered as he bade farewell to fellow leaders after a summit meeting in London on Sunday. He conceded that “not every nation will feel able to contribute,” though he expressed optimism that several would, and that this would send a signal to President Trump that Europe was ready to “do the heavy lifting.”
Drawing Mr. Trump back into the process is as important as the mission and scope of a European coalition, analysts say. For the moment, the United States appears determined to strike a deal with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia over the heads of Europe and Ukraine, and without any security guarantees.
Mr. Starmer presented his coalition of the willing as one of multiple steps that included continued military aid for Ukraine to improve its position on the battlefield, a seat at the table for Kyiv in any peace negotiation and further help with its defensive capabilities after a settlement. That is where the coalition would come in.
In addition to Britain and France, northern European countries like Denmark and the Netherlands seem obvious candidates to take part. Both have been strong financial supporters of Ukraine’s war effort and are NATO members who contributed to other security campaigns, like that in Afghanistan. Germany is the second-largest contributor of military and other aid to Ukraine, after the United States.
But each country faces political and economic hurdles, such as the need to pass specific parliamentary measures in the Netherlands and the lack of a new government in Germany after recent elections. Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said she had an “open mind.” Dick Schoof, prime minister of the Netherlands, said he had not yet made concrete commitments.
“We will renegotiate precisely these issues,” the departing German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said after Sunday’s meeting, in what sounded like something less than a stirring call to arms. Ramping up military spending, he added, “will require an effort that many are not yet really sufficiently prepared for.”
Mr. Scholz’s likely successor, Friedrich Merz, is scrambling to obtain a huge amount of funding for defense — potentially at least 200 billion euros, about $207 billion — in the current German Parliament because he faces the prospect of an opposition minority in the next that is big enough to block additional spending.
President Emmanuel Macron of France said the nascent British-French plan would begin with a one-month truce between Ukraine and Russia. Any deployment of peacekeeping troops would come only after that, he said in an interview with the French paper Le Figaro on Sunday evening.
“There will be no European troops on Ukrainian soil in the coming weeks,” Mr. Macron said, noting the need for negotiations first. “The question is how we use this time to try and obtain an accessible truce, with negotiations that will take several weeks and then, once peace has been signed, a deployment.”
“We want peace,” Mr. Macron said. “We don’t want it at any price, without guarantees.”
Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who has cultivated friendly ties with the Trump administration, remains skeptical of a peacekeeping force. On Sunday, she noted that deploying Italian troops “has never been on the table” and added that such an operation ran the risk of being “highly complex and less effective.”
There are also openly unwilling countries, notably Hungary, which has in the past tried to hold up additional European aid to Ukraine. Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, thanked Mr. Trump for his hostile treatment of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine during their Oval Office meeting last week.
Mr. Orban and Robert Fico, Slovakia’s prime minister, have demanded that the European Union push for an immediate cease-fire in Ukraine. Both have threatened to block statements of support for Ukraine at an E.U. summit meeting this week. Neither leader was invited to the gathering in London.
European leaders fear that Mr. Orban could also hold up efforts to keep about $200 billion in Russian assets frozen when the decision to keep them locked up is up for renewal this summer. London just lent Ukraine 2.26 billion pounds, about $2.8 billion, that it says will be paid back with the interest from frozen Russian assets held in Britain.
“This requires unanimity,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland said of the vote to keep the assets frozen. “We know what Hungary’s position is, what it may be.”
Even if Europe marshals a robust coalition, it is not clear that will satisfy Mr. Trump. On Monday, he is expected to meet with top aides to discuss suspending or canceling U.S. military aid to Ukraine, according to an administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
For Mr. Starmer, who has cast himself as a bridge between Europe and the United States, the diplomatic risks are high.
Britain’s ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson, drew protests at home on Monday after he told ABC News that Mr. Zelensky needed to give “his unequivocal backing to the initiative that President Trump is taking to end the war and to bring a just and lasting peace to Ukraine.”
James Cleverly, a Conservative former foreign secretary, posted on social media, “The UK ambassador to Washington isn’t meant to communicate his own opinion, he is meant to communicate the UK government opinion.” He urged Mr. Starmer and the current foreign secretary, David Lammy, to “grip this.”
But Mr. Starmer has also rejected calls for Europe to distance itself from Mr. Trump, whom he said was committed to a “durable peace.” He said he had discussed Europe’s plans by phone with the American president on Saturday evening. He is likely to face close questioning about his strategy in Parliament on Monday afternoon.
“I wouldn’t be taking this step down this road if I didn’t think it would yield a positive outcome in terms of ensuring that we move together,” Mr. Starmer said after his day of whirlwind diplomacy in London.
Reporting was contributed by Steven Erlanger in Berlin; Aurelien Breeden in Paris; and Eric Schmitt in Washington.