European leaders sought to form a united front on Monday at emergency talks in Paris, called after a U.S. diplomatic blitz on Ukraine that has thrown a once-solid alliance into turmoil and left the Europeans questioning the reliability of their key transatlantic partner.

Senior American and Russian officials, including the countries’ top diplomats, will hold talks on improving their ties and negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine, officials said on Monday, in what would be the most significant meeting between the sides since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour nearly three years ago.

The talks, scheduled for Tuesday in Saudi Arabia, mark another pivotal step by the Trump administration to reverse U.S. policy on isolating Russia and are meant to pave the way for a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This sent Kyiv and key allies scrambling amid concerns that Washington and Moscow could press ahead with a deal that won’t be favourable to them. France called an emergency meeting of European Union countries and the United Kingdom on Monday to decide how to respond.

Shortly before the meeting, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke with Trump, but Macron’s office would not disclose details about the 20-minute discussion.

Leaders of Germany, Britain, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark and the European Union met at the Élysée Palace for talks on Europe’s security quandary. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte was also there.

Since last week, top U.S. officials from the Trump administration, on their first visit to Europe, left the impression that Washington was ready to embrace the Kremlin while it cold-shouldered many of its age-old European allies.

U.S. to leave Europe out of negotiations

Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, underlined on Monday that Europe has no place at the negotiating table.

“All their concerns will be known and addressed as well,” Kellogg told reporters in Brussels, where he briefed the 31 U.S. allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, along with EU officials, before heading to Kyiv for talks on Wednesday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“I don’t think it’s reasonable and feasible to have everybody sitting at the table. We know how that can turn out and that has been our point, is keeping it clean and fast as we can,” he said.

Kellogg’s remarks come after a flurry of speeches by U.S. Vice-President JD Vance and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth last week questioned both Europe’s security commitments and its fundamental democratic principles.

Macron, who has long championed a stronger European defence, said their stinging rebukes and threats of non-co-operation in the face of military danger felt like a shock to the system.

The tipping point came when Trump decided to upend years of U.S. policy by holding talks with Putin in hopes of ending the Russia-Ukraine war.

U.S. and Russia to hold high-level talks

Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov and Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, set off for the Saudi capital on Monday, according to Russian state TV. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff will meet the Russian delegation, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said. Ukraine will not participate.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the talks will be primarily focused on “restoring the entire range of U.S.-Russian relations, as well as preparing possible talks on the Ukrainian settlement and organizing a meeting of the two presidents.”

Bruce said the meeting is aimed at determining how serious the Russians are about wanting peace and whether detailed negotiations can be started.

“I think the goal, obviously, for everyone is to determine if this is something that can move forward,” she told reporters travelling with Rubio in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. 

Bruce said that even though Ukraine would not be at the table for Tuesday’s talks, actual peace negotiations would only take place with Ukraine’s involvement. Kyiv’s participation in any peace talks was a bedrock of U.S. policy under Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden.

Hegseth, the U.S. defence secretary, said last week that NATO membership for Ukraine was unrealistic and suggested Kyiv should abandon hopes of winning all of its territory back from Russia — two key items on Putin’s wish list.

Ukraine won’t accept outcome if Kyiv doesn’t take part

The talks would mark a significant expansion of U.S.-Russian contacts, nearly three years into a war that has seen ties fall to the lowest level in decades.

Tuesday’s talks follow a telephone call between Trump and Putin in which the American president said they “agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately.” The call upended years of U.S. policy, ending the isolation of Moscow over its Feb. 24, 2022, invasion of Ukraine.

WATCH | Trump, Putin discuss ending Ukraine war in ‘highly productive’ call last week:

Trump, Putin discuss ending Ukraine war in ‘highly productive’ call

U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to visit each other’s countries and begin talks to end the war in Ukraine in what Trump called a ‘highly productive’ call. Still unclear is whether Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy will even have a role in peace talks.

After the call, Trump phoned Zelenskyy to inform him about their conversation. Trump on Sunday told reporters that Zelenskyy “will be involved” but did not elaborate.

The Ukrainian president said Monday his country had not been invited to the upcoming talks and won’t accept the outcome if Kyiv doesn’t take part.

The U.S.-Russia talks would “yield no results,” given the absence of any Ukrainian officials, Zelenskyy said on a conference call with journalists from the United Arab Emirates.

Ukraine’s president said he would travel to Turkey on Monday and to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, but that his trip to the Arab nation was unrelated to the U.S.-Russia talks.

Europeans stand by their support to Ukraine

EU officials have pushed for the bloc — which along with the U.S. has staunchly supported Kyiv — to have a say in any Ukraine peace talks, and Zelenskyy and his officials also insisted that Europe needs to be present at the negotiations.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told reporters that a possible peace agreement with Russia cannot be forced on Ukraine from outside.

“We welcome the fact that talks are taking place, that peace is developing everywhere. But for us it must and is clear: This does not mean that peace can be dictated and that Ukraine must accept what is presented to it,” he insisted after he left the Élysée Palace, as the meeting was still ongoing.

“Negotiations are moving fast with Europe,” Zelenskyy said in a virtual news conference Monday in Kyiv, adding recent U.S. moves “accelerated everything.”

Zelenskyy said Macron had agreed to provide him with a briefing on the conclusions from the meeting in Paris.

A strong U.S. component, though, will remain essential for the foreseeable future since it will take many years before European nations can ratchet up defence production and integrate it into an effective force.

That U.S. bond also applies to dealing with war in Ukraine, said British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

“U.S. support will remain critical and a U.S. security guarantee is essential for a lasting peace, because only the U.S. can deter Putin from attacking again,” Starmer wrote in Monday’s Daily Telegraph.

Sending troops after a peace deal?

Starmer appears to be charting a “third way” in Europe’s shifting geopolitical landscape — aligning strategically with Trump while maintaining EU ties.

Some analysts suggest this positioning could allow him to act as a bridge between Trump and Europe, potentially serving as a key messenger to the White House on his visit to Washington, D.C., next week.

While many EU nations are still mulling whether to contribute troops to a potential force in Ukraine after a peace deal, Starmer said that the U.K. was “ready and willing to contribute to security guarantees to Ukraine by putting our own troops on the ground if necessary.

Macron last year refused to rule out sending Western troops into Ukraine if necessary.

“A ceasefire must not lead to Russian rearmament, which is followed by new Russian attacks,” warned Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen ahead of the Paris meeting.

Yet Scholz said it was too soon to talk about boots on the ground.

“It is completely premature and completely the wrong time to have this discussion now. I’m even a little irritated by these debates,” the German chancellor said. Peace talks “have not taken place and … Ukraine has not said yes and has not sat at the table.

“This is highly inappropriate, to put it bluntly and honestly: We don’t even know what the outcome will be,” Scholz said.