Who will join Europe’s ‘coalition of the willing’ to help Ukraine?

LONDON — Britain and France have promised to muster a “coalition of the willing” to secure a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia. Now comes the acid test for Europe: How many countries will step up, and does that even matter, given Russia’s rejection of such a coalition as part of any settlement?

Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain left those questions unanswered as he bade farewell to fellow leaders after a summit in London on Sunday. He conceded that “not every nation will feel able to contribute,” though he expressed optimism that several would, and that this would send a signal to President Donald Trump that Europe was ready to “do the heavy lifting.”

Drawing Trump back into the process is as important as the mission and scope of a European coalition, analysts say. For the moment, the United States appears determined to strike a deal with President Vladimir Putin of Russia over the heads of Europe and Ukraine, and without any security guarantees.

Starmer presented his coalition of the willing as one of multiple steps that included continued military aid for Ukraine to improve its position on the battlefield, a seat at the table for Ukraine in any peace negotiation and further help with its defensive capabilities after a settlement. That is where the coalition would come in.

In addition to Britain and France, northern European countries like Denmark and the Netherlands seem obvious candidates to take part. Both have been strong financial supporters of Ukraine’s war effort and are NATO members who contributed to other security campaigns, like that in Afghanistan. Germany is the second-largest contributor of military and other aid to Ukraine, after the United States.

But each country faces political and economic hurdles, such as the need to pass specific parliamentary measures in the Netherlands and the lack of a new government in Germany after recent elections. Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said she had an “open mind.” Dick Schoof, prime minister of the Netherlands, said he had not yet made concrete commitments.

“We will renegotiate precisely these issues,” departing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said after Sunday’s meeting, in what sounded like something less than a stirring call to arms. Ramping up military spending, he added, “will require an effort that many are not yet really sufficiently prepared for.”

Scholz’s likely successor, Friedrich Merz, is scrambling to obtain a huge amount of funding for defense — potentially at least 200 billion euros (about $207 billion) — in the current German parliament because he faces the prospect of an opposition minority in the next that is big enough to block additional spending.

President Emmanuel Macron of France said the nascent British-French plan would begin with a one-month truce between Ukraine and Russia. Any deployment of peacekeeping troops would come only after that, he said in an interview with French paper Le Figaro on Sunday evening.

“There will be no European troops on Ukrainian soil in the coming weeks,” Macron said, noting the need for negotiations first. “The question is how we use this time to try and obtain an accessible truce, with negotiations that will take several weeks and then, once peace has been signed, a deployment.”

“We want peace,” Macron said. “We don’t want it at any price, without guarantees.”

French Prime Minister François Bayrou took a harder line Monday night, telling lawmakers during a debate on Ukraine that “what we have brutally discovered over the past few weeks” was a “stunning reality” that the international rule of law was broken.

“They want to encircle us, to subjugate us, to bend us, too, to the law of the strongest — and this on the part of our allies,” Bayrou said, who plays little role in France’s foreign policy.

But Bayrou insisted that “we Europeans are stronger than we believe,” as he called for increased military spending around the Continent. “On this point, France is for once in agreement with Mr. Trump,” he said. “If we are strong, we can’t ask others to defend us over the long term.”

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has cultivated friendly ties with the Trump administration, remains skeptical of a peacekeeping force. On Sunday, she noted that deploying Italian troops “has never been on the table” and added that such an operation ran the risk of being “highly complex and less effective.”

There are also openly unwilling countries, notably Hungary, which has in the past tried to hold up additional European aid to Ukraine. Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orban thanked Trump for his hostile treatment of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine during their Oval Office meeting last week.

Orban and Robert Fico, Slovakia’s prime minister, have demanded that the European Union push for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine. Both have threatened to block statements of support for Ukraine at an EU summit meeting this week. Neither leader was invited to the gathering in London.

European leaders will gather Thursday for a specially planned European Council meeting, where officials are expected to discuss support for Ukraine and how to build up defense capabilities across the EU.

The point is to “approve concrete decisions,” Antonio Costa, president of the council, said during a news conference Monday.

Even if Europe marshals a robust coalition, it is not clear that will satisfy Trump. On Monday, he is expected to meet with top aides to discuss suspending or canceling U.S. military aid to Ukraine, according to an administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

In addition to shutting down military aid, Trump could also decide to pull back on intelligence sharing and training for Ukrainian troops and pilots, as well as on U.S. management of an office that coordinates international aid at a U.S. military base in Germany, the official said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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