On the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, President Donald Trump and other world leaders are meeting as he pushes for an end to the conflict that has raged over the past 36 months.
Trump and other leaders of the G7 are participating in a leadership call this morning, as the president also hosts French President Emmanuel Macron at the White House later on Monday. The Trump administration’s push for an end to the conflict, along with a more skeptical stance toward Ukraine in the ongoing war, has caused some division among Western powers regarding how to proceed with the war.
While the U.S. and Russia work to reopen relations between the two powers, Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau showed his country’s support for Ukraine by flying to Kyiv to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion. Trudeau will also be on the call today.
British Prime Minister Kier Starmer, another G7 member, has reframed from criticizing Trump’s recent rhetoric but he is expected to push Trump to continue supporting Ukraine.
Starmer said U.S. support for Ukraine “will be vital to deter Russia from launching another invasion in just a few years’ time.”
In the United Nations, dueling resolutions regarding the war are expected to be considered. The European-backed Ukrainian resolution would call for Russia to immediately withdraw its forces from Ukraine, while a U.S.-backed resolution would not include language about Russia invading Ukraine but would call for a “swift end to the conflict and further urges a lasting peace between Ukraine and Russia,” according to the Associated Press.
According to the report, the European-backed resolution is expected to be voted on by the full General Assembly despite U.S. pressure to pull it, while the U.S. resolution will likely be voted on by the General Assembly and the Security Council.
Unlike the previous anniversaries of the invasion, the U.S. is softening its public messaging toward Russia’s role in the conflict as it seeks to have the aggressor country come to the negotiating table with Ukraine to end the war. Officials from the U.S. and Russia met last week, with Ukraine objecting to being left out of the initial talks and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky getting into a war of words with Trump.
While the Trump administration has engaged diplomatically with Russia in peace talks, several Western leaders are still showing their unabashed support for Ukraine, with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and several European leaders visiting Kyiv Monday. Several of the leaders participated in a summit in Ukraine’s capital city as a show of support.
The leaders of the European Union will also hold a special summit on March 6 regarding the war between Ukraine and Russia and what next steps to take as the U.S. aggressively pushes for an end to the conflict.
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Trump’s meeting with Macron Monday in Washington, D.C., will be days before the president will also host Starmer at the White House.
Macron said he will “tell [Trump] basically, you cannot be weak in the face of President Putin. It’s not you, it’s not your trademark.”