G7 leaders pressed President Trump to keep backing Ukraine at the Evian summit on Tuesday, working to push a war now in its fifth year back to the top of an agenda the American president would rather fill with trade and the Middle East. The gathering at the French spa town on Lake Geneva, hosted by President Emmanuel Macron and running June 15 to 17, opened with European leaders determined to lock in Washington's commitment before attention drifts elsewhere.
Zelensky joins a short session
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky flew in for a morning working session, but the talks wrapped fast — leaders met for roughly 75 minutes, according to the French presidency, a sign of how compressed Ukraine's window has become. Zelensky pressed for a joint communiqué that commits the bloc to sustaining military and financial support through the end of 2026, and for tighter sanctions on Russian energy revenue. European Council President António Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen represented the EU, with Macron promising privately to lobby Trump to maintain pressure on Moscow.
"The fear in the room is not that anyone says no out loud," said a European diplomat briefed on the discussions. "It is that the language gets vaguer, the timelines get shorter, and the money quietly tapers." That anxiety has deepened since allies watched Washington's focus swing toward the Gulf, building on the fractures that were already visible as leaders arrived in Evian.
A divided table
The summit lays bare how far the transatlantic alliance has drifted. Trump has spent months pressing Kyiv toward a negotiated settlement and questioning the scale of US assistance, while France, Germany and the United Kingdom argue that easing pressure now would reward Russian aggression and embolden other revisionist powers. The contrast was sharpened by events on the ground: only days earlier, Russia struck a historic Kyiv cathedral and killed five people in an overnight barrage, a reminder to European leaders of what they say is at stake.
Trade tensions hovered over the talks as well. European officials remain wary of the administration's tariff strategy, and several leaders raised the threat new American duties pose to their own export economies, complicating efforts to present a united front on Ukraine.
The mood among the Europeans was one of careful management rather than confrontation. Aides described a deliberate strategy of flattering the American president's appetite for deals while steering him away from public breaks with Kyiv — handing him wins on the Middle East and trade in hopes of preserving the consensus on Russia. Canadian and Japanese delegations, eager to keep Washington engaged in their own regions, largely backed the European push. But no one inside the lakeside conference center pretended the old certainty was back. "We are negotiating with an ally the way you would negotiate with a counterpart," one official said. "That is the new normal, and everyone in that room knows it."
Middle East shares the agenda
The war Trump would rather discuss — the one his administration helped wind down — also loomed large. With a US-brokered framework intended to formalize the end of the Iran conflict due to be signed in the coming days, the president arrived eager to showcase the ceasefire he declared after 101 days of fighting. Allies welcomed the de-escalation but pushed for verification guarantees, wary of celebrating a deal whose durability remains untested.
A joint statement was expected after the summit, and the haggling Tuesday centered on a few decisive words: whether the document would name a date for continued Ukraine support or settle for the looser pledge of solidarity that gives Washington room to maneuver. For Zelensky, who left Evian within hours of arriving, the difference between those two formulations could shape the battlefield through the winter. For Macron, the test of his presidency of the G7 is whether he can send everyone home with a text that still means something once the cameras are gone — and whether Trump signs it without reservation.