Zelensky to attend Paris summit on security guarantees for Ukraine

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The leaders of France and Britain will on Thursday co-chair a Paris summit involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Elysee said, amid a new international push to broker an end to Russia's three-and-a-half-year invasion.

The gathering of the so-called "Coalition of the Willing" will comprise some 30 mainly European countries. Some leaders will attend in person and others by video, the Elysee Palace said.

Zelensky plans to attend the summit, a source told AFP separately. The meeting will be chaired by President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

The leaders will "discuss work on security guarantees for Ukraine carried out in recent weeks and take stock of the consequences to be drawn from Russia's attitude, which stubbornly refuses peace," the French presidency said in a statement.

The source said that the main topic of the Paris talks will be security guarantees for Ukraine and "promoting diplomacy, because the Russians are wriggling out again" of the efforts to end the war.

US President Donald Trump is not expected to take part in the gathering, the source added.

Ministers from the 'coalition' countries will on Wednesday discuss military support for Ukraine, a spokesman for French Armed Forces Minister Sebastien Lecornu said.

The issues of Western-backed security guarantees for Ukraine if a truce comes into force has dominated the diplomatic flurry around Ukraine in recent weeks.

Trump last month held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska but the meeting yielded no breakthrough.

Three days later, Trump gathered Zelensky and European leaders for talks at the White House.

Kyiv wants security guarantees to deter any future Russian attacks. A European peacekeeping force has been floated publicly among leaders as a potential security arrangement for when the conflict ends.

Trump has indicated the United States could back up any European peacekeeping plan, but would not deploy US soldiers to Ukraine.

Russia has pushed back against any Western peacekeeping troops, with the Kremlin saying it viewed "such discussions negatively."