European leaders said today that they had hammered out a strategy with President Trump for his meeting later this week with Vladimir Putin. Under the plan, the leaders said, Trump will demand a cease-fire before serious truce talks begin and will insist that Ukraine be included in any peace negotiations.

The strategy emerged during a video call that Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, hastily arranged in an effort to push the American leader to back Ukraine’s demands. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and his European allies had voiced concern that Putin would use the meeting to drive a wedge between the U.S. and Ukraine — or worse, to set the stage for a repeat of the Yalta summit.

But after today’s meeting, Merz assured reporters that Trump “largely shares” Europe’s plan for ending the war. Trump also sounded pleased with the discussion: “We had a very good call,” he said. “I would rate it a 10. Very friendly.”

Merz and Zelensky told reporters that the principles that Trump had agreed upon for the talks with Putin also included an insistence on security guarantees for Ukraine. Still, Trump is famously mercurial. His meeting with Putin in Alaska on Friday will be a critical test of his longtime affinity for his Russian counterpart.

On the battlefield: Russian forces are closing in on the eastern Ukrainian city of Dobropillia, prompting urgent evacuations of residents just six miles from the front line.