Macron's second summit this week as allies scramble to support Ukraine

French president Emmanuel Macron is holding another urgent meeting on Wednesday with allies of Ukraine, to try to agree a unified position in the wake of the U.S.-Russia meeting in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.

The first meeting on Monday – with the UK, Germany, Italy and the NATO secretary-general, among others – broke up without a joint statement on collective defense or troop deployments.

Canada, Norway and Greece are taking part in the second round of talks, along with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. All three Baltic nations have been hawkish on Moscow and fulsome in their backing for Ukraine since the conflict began in 2022.

Finland and Sweden, both of whom decided to abandon neutrality and join NATO following the start of the fighting, will also be at the talks. On February 17, on the day of the first talks at the Elysee Palace, Stockholm said it was not ruling out the possibility of sending Swedish soldiers to Ukraine as part of any formal peacekeeping mission.

Emmanuel Macron welcomed the interim Romanian president, Ilie Bolojan, to the Elysee Palace on Wednesday, as part of the lead-up to the talks. 

Romania is one of the four countries that are EU members and NATO allies, and which have a border with Ukraine. France has more than 1,000 troops training in Romania as part of a NATO exercise to improve allies' readiness for possible future war.

The countries taking part in the informal talks in Paris on Wednesday will undoubtedly discuss President Trump's remarks, made in a news conference on Tuesday, in which he blamed Kyiv for starting the war.

Russia launched its so-called 'special military operation' against Ukraine in February 2022.

The changing narrative in Washington is forcing its European allies to recalibrate their policies towards collective continental security amid growing fears that Europe and Ukraine will be sidelined if the United States and Russia negotiate an end to the conflict bilaterally.