PARIS: Donald Trump on Thursday expressed frustration with EU countries that still buy Russian oil, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, after speaking with the US president and European leaders during a summit on Ukraine in Paris.
Ukraine’s allies met in Paris to discuss security guarantees for Kyiv in the event of a peace deal to end the Russia-Ukraine war, now in its fourth year.
The United States was represented at the talks by Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, who also met Zelensky separately. The call with Trump took place by videoconference, AFP reported.
“President Trump is very dissatisfied that Russia’s oil is being purchased by Europe. Among others, there are two countries, we know that these are Hungary and Slovakia,” Zelensky told reporters in Paris following the summit.
The European Union imposed a ban on most oil imports from Russia in 2022 over the Ukraine war.
It however made an exception for imports to Slovakia and Hungary to give the landlocked central European countries time to find alternative oil supplies.
Ukraine has targeted Russia’s Druzhba oil pipeline, which carries Russian oil to Slovakia and Hungary, throughout the conflict.
Both nations have asked the European Commission — the EU’s executive arm — to act against Ukraine’s “repeated attacks” on the pipeline.
Slovakia’s leader Robert Fico is set to meet Zelensky in western Ukraine on Friday after holding talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in China earlier this week.
Last month, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban said he had complained to Trump over the attacks on the pipeline.
Ukraine security guarantees
French President Emmanuel Macron claimed on Thursday that 26 countries have pledged to take part in a force to be deployed in Ukraine after any peace accord with Russia.
European leaders held a summit in Paris of the coalition of the willing, hosted by Macron and attended by Zelensky.
Some European leaders attended in person and others, like UK premier Keir Starmer, remotely.
The meeting represented a new push led by Macron to show that Europe can act independently of Washington after Trump upended US foreign policy and launched direct talks with Putin after returning to the White House.
“We have today 26 countries who have formally committed — some others have not yet taken a position — to deploy as a ‘reassurance force’ troops in Ukraine, or be present on the ground, in the sea, or in the air,” Macron told reporters alongside Zelensky.
Zelensky hailed the move. “I think that today, for the first time in a long time, this is the first such serious concrete step,” he said.
However there was no clear indication that Europe had won the pledge from Washington of the security “backstop” it seeks and the American contribution remains unclear, according to AFP.
There are also divisions within the coalition, with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz urging more pressure but remaining cautious about the scope of involvement, AFP reported.
“Germany will decide on military involvement at the appropriate time once the framework conditions have been clarified,” a German government spokesman said after the summit.
Taking a similar line, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni reiterated at the meeting that Italy will not send troops to Ukraine, but it could help monitor any potential peace deal, her office said.
Before the Paris talks, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow would not agree to the deployment of foreign troops in Ukraine “in any format”.
