Europe’s Leaders Headed Off Giveaway to Putin, but Emerged Without a Clear Path

In the annals of trans-Atlantic diplomacy, Monday’s meeting between President Trump and European leaders may go down as one of the stranger summits in memory. Historic, yet uncertain in its outcome; momentous, yet ephemeral in its effect on the war in Ukraine; choreographed, yet hostage to the impulses of a single man, Mr. Trump.

As Europe’s leaders began returning to their slumbering capitals, diplomats and foreign policy experts struggled to make sense of a midsummer’s meeting with Mr. Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky that often had a dreamlike quality — with made-for-TV moments and unexpected interludes.

The seven European leaders put forward a show of support for Mr. Zelensky and unity with each other. They won a potentially vital, if vague, expression of support from Mr. Trump for postwar security guarantees for Ukraine and sidestepped a discussion of territorial concessions, according to Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany.

Still, they all but acquiesced to Mr. Trump’s abandonment of a cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine as a condition for further talks. Analysts said that put Europe’s leaders essentially where they were before Mr. Trump’s meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Alaska last week: subject to the president’s faith that he can conjure a deal with the Russian leader to end the grinding war.

“In Anchorage and in Washington, it was a triumph of empty vagueness and meaningless commitments,” said Gérard Araud, who served as France’s ambassador to the United States during Mr. Trump’s first term. “In both cases, no firm decision has been taken. Nothing has changed.”

Mr. Araud said Mr. Trump’s reassuring words about security guarantees, and the lack of a blowup between him and Mr. Zelensky, were a relief for Europeans. But the absence of a detailed, agreed plan for negotiations with Russia, he said, could store up problems for the future. The worrisome scenario, Mr. Araud said, was “talks and talks, which lead to nothing but possible misunderstanding.”

Diplomats pointed out that the remarkable spectacle of European leaders ditching their summer holiday plans to rush to Washington was prompted less by a rare opportunity to make peace than by the fear that Mr. Trump might attempt to bully Mr. Zelensky, as he did in a turbulent Oval Office meeting in February. This time, the fear was Mr. Trump would try to force the Ukrainian president into a one-sided, land-for-peace deal with Russia.

“Zelensky and seven European leaders rushed to Washington for one reason,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a former American ambassador to NATO and China. “They don’t trust Trump’s commitment to a free and independent Ukraine or his mystifying infatuation with Putin and his authoritarian persona.”

In one of the day’s more dramatic moments, Mr. Trump left his guests to place a call to Mr. Putin. They discussed the possibility of a bilateral meeting between Mr. Putin and Mr. Zelensky, and a trilateral follow-up including Mr. Trump.

Mr. Putin suggested Moscow as a venue, an offer he first floated in Anchorage, a senior European diplomat briefed on the call said. European leaders were frightened by that scenario, but Mr. Trump politely declined Mr. Putin, the diplomat said.

In another odd interlude, Mr. Trump was overheard on an open microphone telling President Emmanuel Macron of France, “I think he wants to make a deal for me. Do you understand that? As crazy as it sounds.”

Mr. Macron may have more experience than any Western leader with the frustrations of negotiating with Mr. Putin. He spent early 2022 flying back and forth from Moscow to sit across a long table from the Russian president in a marathon, ultimately fruitless, quest to talk him out of invading Ukraine.

Mr. Macron also has plenty of experience dealing with Mr. Trump, having come into office four months after his first inauguration. The relationship has had its ups and downs. A military parade on the Champs-Élysées in 2017 dazzled Mr. Trump, but crossed wires over Israel and Gaza at a Group of 7 meeting in Canada in June left him grouchy and complaining that “Emmanuel” is “always wrong.” But on Monday, the French president followed a time-tested script in placating his host.

“European leaders have figured out the Trump playbook and are playing it well,” said Mujtaba Rahman, an expert on Europe at the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group. “Europe now clearly has a seat at the table, indeed many seats at the table,” he added, noting that even the European Commission, a longtime bugbear for Mr. Trump, was represented by its president, Ursula von der Leyen.

Mr. Rahman said the leaders not only handled Mr. Trump well but also presented a coherent and consistent approach in dealing with him. While Mr. Merz and Mr. Macron both raised the importance of a cease-fire, neither pressed it to the point that it antagonized Mr. Trump or opened fissures in their unified front.

“We were well prepared and well-coordinated,” Mr. Merz told reporters after the meeting. “We also represented the same viewpoints. I think that really pleased the American president, in the sense that he noticed that we Europeans are speaking with one voice here.”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, who has spearheaded Europe’s efforts to try to build a multinational peacekeeping force for Ukraine, emphasized Mr. Trump’s openness to an American role in that effort. He said it was also clear now that no peace deal would be negotiated over Mr. Zelensky’s head.

“That is a recognition of the principle that on some of these issues, whether it’s territory or the exchange of prisoners, or the very serious issue of the return of children, that is something where Ukraine must be at the table,” said Mr. Starmer, before he returned to an interrupted family vacation in Scotland. (Tens of thousands of Ukrainian children were abducted and deported into Russia during the war, leading to often frantic searches by their parents.)

For Europe’s leaders, these facts underline how much has changed since they gathered in London in March after Mr. Trump’s explosive first meeting with Mr. Zelensky. There, they contemplated a future in which the United States seemed determined to forsake its post-World War II role as a guarantor of peace in Europe.

And yet, diplomats and analysts warned, the fate of the trans-Atlantic alliance still hangs in the balance, dependent on an American president who was uncharacteristically polite to Mr. Zelensky and his European guests on Monday but could shift his tone on a dime, particularly after his next encounter with Mr. Putin.

“While President Trump proved effective in convincing NATO allies to commit to a historic increase in defense spending,” Mr. Burns, the former NATO ambassador, said, “he has failed to lead on the greatest threat to the future of the alliance — a vengeful and violent Vladimir Putin.”

Jim Tankersley contributed reporting from Berlin and Roger Cohen from Paris.