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EU leaders on Thursday put on a show of solidarity with Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a summit designed as a riposte to the hostile treatment of the Ukrainian president by the Trump administration in the US.
Five days after Zelenskyy was ejected from the White House following a clash that led to the US suspending military aid and intelligence support to Kyiv, he was promised “enduring” support by all but one of the bloc’s leaders.
They also pledged to increase their own defence capabilities in the face of an uncertain transatlantic bond.
Hungary’s pro-Russia premier Viktor Orbán refused to support the statement, forcing the other 26 leaders to issue a text without him.
“Dear Volodymyr, we have been with you since day one,” said António Costa, European Council president, who chaired the leaders’ summit. “We continue to be with you now, and we will continue in the future.”
The split underscores the significant geopolitical shift created by Trump’s embrace of Russia. Zelenskyy, who joined the EU leaders for lunch, said afterwards: “It is very important that Ukrainians are not alone. We feel it and know it.”
The leaders, with the exception of Orbán, called for Kyiv and other European capitals to be involved in any negotiations about the future of Ukraine. Trump has opened bilateral peace talks with Russia that do not involve Kyiv or Brussels.
However, the White House has appeared to soften its stance towards Ukraine in recent days. On Thursday, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said the administration was in talks to arrange a meeting with a Ukrainian delegation in Saudi Arabia to agree a framework for “a peace agreement and an initial ceasefire”.
Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, said that the US freeze on supplying weapons to Kyiv was a “pause, pending a true commitment to a path to peace”, adding that the White House was “very encouraged by the signs we’re seeing”.
The joint EU statement nods to increased military support for Ukraine and the readiness of states to “contribute to security guarantees based on their respective competences and capabilities” to a post-conflict state.
Orbán has said that Trump’s stance on the war means the EU’s support for Ukraine needs to change.
“It doesn’t matter in what form we state our support for Ukraine, just that we do,” said one diplomat involved in the talks. “At this particular juncture, it would be disastrous not to.”
A separate statement, agreed by all 27 EU leaders, endorsed new defence funding initiatives proposed by the commission. These include changes to the bloc’s debt and deficit rules to exempt an increase in defence spending, and an instrument that would provide €150bn in loans to capitals to spend on military capabilities.
Both ideas were given broad political support, but the details of both are yet to be negotiated ahead of approval by governments.
“Europe must become more sovereign, more responsible for its own defence and better equipped to act and deal autonomously with immediate and future challenges and threats with a 360° approach,” the 27 leaders said in the statement, which did not refer to the US.
The loan instrument, targeted at specific capabilities including air defence and drone systems, would be “as flexible as possible with as few strings attached”, one EU official said, to ensure fast adoption. It would use existing Nato criteria to ensure it was being correctly spent, they added.
The structure enables the commission to get around an EU treaty ban on direct military expenditure by instead boosting the European defence industry’s output. Some of that production could be used to arm Ukraine.
Additional reporting by Alice Hancock in Trowbridge
