On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron called an emergency meeting in order to cobble together a plan as the Trump administration opted to meet with representatives from Russia to negotiate a peace deal in the Ukraine-Russia war. No representatives from Ukraine were in attendance and NATO-allied countries were not present either, leading Trump's relationship with the EU leaders to be strained.
The EU leaders clashed over the topic of sending troops to Ukraine, with several expressing reluctance to send peacekeeping forces into the war-torn country, according to the Financial Times. Britain offered to put "boots on the ground" in Ukraine, but Tusk, representing Poland and the country of Spain, were not looking to send military forces to the area.
France talked about cobbling together a "reassurance force" that would be able to back up any ceasefire line in Ukraine that the deal comes to. Keir Starmer said that he is "ready and willing . . . [to put] our own troops on the ground if necessary," but others were much more reluctant to make such commitments.
"Nobody is currently considering sending troops to Ukraine,” Spain's foreign minister Jose Manuel Albares said. “Peace is still very far away and for one reason only: Vladimir Putin."
Tusk, while saying that Poland will not put troops on the ground in Ukraine, has offered to maintain humanitarian aid as well as military aid for Ukraine as it has been doing for the last few years during the war.
Despite not being willing to send troops to Ukraine, Tusk has been vocal about getting the United States to approach the peace talks with leaders in the EU as well as for Europe to make a "plan of action" for the situation.
