Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrives for a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace in Paris, France, 3 September 2025. Photo: EPA/TERESA SUAREZ / POOL
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is due to meet with members of the so-called Coalition of the Willing in Paris on Thursday to discuss how Ukraine’s post-war security can be guaranteed in the event of a peace deal with Russia being agreed.
The meeting, convened by French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer following the expiration of a deadline set by the White House for Vladimir Putin to agree to a face-to-face meeting with Zelensky, will be attended by some 30 world leaders both in person and virtually, with concrete proposals for future military assistance to Kyiv on the agenda.
Made up primarily of European countries, the informal coalition, which was envisioned as a functional substitute for Ukrainian NATO membership capable of defending the country from future invasion by Russia, has struggled to provide tangible security assurances since its creation in March.
However, in light of a reported agreement by the Trump administration to provide intelligence oversight to any coalition force and join a European-led air defence shield for a post-war Ukraine, Wednesday’s meeting in Paris is expected to deliver more specific security proposals.
“I expect tomorrow, or soon after tomorrow, to have clarity on what collectively we can deliver,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said on Wednesday, adding that the coalition could therefore “engage even more intensely, also with the American side, to see what they want to deliver in terms of their participation in security guarantees,” Reuters reported.
On Tuesday, the Élysée Palace told Euronews that most of the technical work regarding the coalition’s security guarantees was nearly complete, and that its members were just waiting for official confirmation of the US assistance it could expect.
“We are willing and able, and we are ready,” the Élysée said. “What we will be looking for on Thursday is confirmation that the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ does indeed have the support of the US.”
In an interview with the Financial Times published on Sunday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who will attend the meeting in Paris, said there was a “clear road map” for post-war military deployments, and that Trump had agreed to some kind of “American presence” to bolster peacekeeping operations.
However, the Russian government once again ruled out any kind of post-war security arrangement in which foreign military forces are deployed to Ukrainian territory, with Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova saying on Thursday that Russia did not “intend to discuss foreign intervention in Ukraine, which is fundamentally unacceptable and undermines all security, in any form or format," according to TASS.
Describing any type of European security guarantee for Ukraine as “absolutely unacceptable”, Zakharova said that they were intended only to preserve Ukraine “as a springboard for terror, for provocations against our country.”
“They are not guarantees of Ukraine’s security, they are guarantees of danger to the European continent,” Zakharova added.