The June 7 summit of the leaders of Britain, France, and Germany alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was a two faced demand to be included in peace negotiations with Russia alongside the US, while issuing ultimatums meant to render negotiations impossible.

The E3, represented by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz gathered in Downing Street and issued a joint five-point declaration.

Since February 2025, there have been at least seven rounds of talks on Ukraine led by the Donald Trump’s White House and conducted without European involvement. Two major US-Russia meetings in 2025 explicitly excluded both Ukraine and Europe. Several US-Ukraine and US-Russia bilateral rounds were held in Saudi Arabia in March 2025, also without European participation. Since the beginning of this year, at least four US-Ukraine-Russia talks have taken place—in Abu Dhabi and Geneva—with no seat at the table for the European powers.

As the WSWS noted following the January Paris summit, London, France and Berlin are not prepared to allow the US and Russia to reach a deal at the expense of their own strategic and economic interests in the region. Indeed, they are hostile to all efforts to bring the four-year war to a close.

The June 7 statement’s very first sentence declares that the leaders met “to reiterate their unwavering support for Ukraine” and to discuss “next steps in negotiations.” The leaders “underlined that Europe had an important role to play in any settlement, as a steadfast supporter of Ukraine…” and “were clear that all efforts should be conducted in closest cooperation with Ukraine, wider European partners, and the US.”

Concluding the 540-word statement, the fifth point was included to effectively institute veto power over any US-Russia agreement, directed against both Washington and Moscow. It states that “European security interests must be safeguarded in any deal. Elements of any negotiation related to the [European Union] and NATO would need the consent of the EU and its Member States and NATO Allies respectively.”

As US support for Kyiv has waned, the European powers, as documented by the WSWS, have used each putative peace initiative to prolong a bloody war at the heart of the continent in which hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost.

The other points in the agreement were similarly devised knowing that Moscow could not agree to them. Point one calls on Putin alone—not on all parties—to agree to a ceasefire, following a series of Ukrainian advances—a demand for Russia to freeze its forces at a moment of Ukrainian advance.

Point 2 demands Russia accept the current battlefield position as the baseline for talks, while declaring as a precondition that “international borders must not be changed by force.” This clause also insists that “Ukraine’s sovereign right to choose its own security arrangements and alliances must be fully respected”, paving the way for Ukraine to join NATO and the EU. This is another existential red line set by Russia, even prior to the February 2022 invasion. It was NATO expansion to Russia’s borders that deliberately provoked the invasion.

Point three of the statement demands the deployment of a Multinational Force in Ukraine as a condition for any ceasefire, which amounts to placing NATO-affiliated troops on Russian borders under a “peacekeeping” cover. The demand was issued knowing Russia has already explicitly rejected this framework.

Point four conditions economic normalization with Moscow and the release of frozen Russian sovereign assets on Russia “ceasing its war of aggression” and paying compensation for war damages—also anathema to the Kremlin.

Without the stream of loans, grants, and weapons from London, Paris, and Berlin, the Kyiv government could not sustain the war effort for even 24 hours. With hundreds of billions of pounds and euros in funding already committed over more than four years to Ukraine for war against Russia, the statement laid the basis for tens of billions more in arms and aid to be handed to Ukraine.

So far, EU support already stands at €200.6 billion, with a further €90 billion loan to Ukraine agreed by the European Council for 2026–2027.

The London meeting discussed “how to use the upcoming G7 summit at Evian [June 15-17], the next meeting of the Coalition of the Willing [July 13-14], and the NATO summit at Ankara [July 7–8] to best coordinate further support for Ukraine based on its prioritised needs, including further pressure on Russia’s war economy and an increased pledge of military and defence support for Ukraine at the NATO Summit.”

There was an “urgent need to scale up the production of interceptors and co-develop anti-ballistic missile and deep strike capabilities, and to support the future sustainability of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”

This is critical as the US administration under Trump, whose opposition to the EU powers has widened due to their refusal to commit military forces directly to war against Iran, has ceased all military support to Ukraine.

Politico reported ahead of the London summit, “European countries allocated €2 billion per month in military aid to Kyiv between January and April, according to a report published by the Kiel Institute think tank… a slight dip from the €2.4 billion per month they donated during the same period in 2025. The report recorded no US military aid during that period.”

The US wants control over Ukraine’s vital raw materials and assets as part of any deal with Moscow but is not prepared to pour more funding into achieving it. Trump has forced individual European governments to instead purchase US arms through the Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL), providing weaponry for the Ukraine battlefield—reaping between $4 billion and $5 billion for US military corporations so far in the year since it was established.

The E3 “welcomed recent Ukrainian successes on the battlefield, including the recent liberation of territory and ground-breaking use of drone technology”.

Russia has also stepped up its war effort, including hitting, in a drone strike—as the London event began—a store containing spent nuclear fuel close to the disused Chornobyl nuclear power plant.

This accounts for the letter sent at the end of May from Zelensky to Trump and Congress, asking for more US-made air defence support. The letter was obtained by the Associated Press, which reported that “Zelenskyy urged them to supply more Patriot PAC-3 missiles and other air defense systems to counter Russia’s intensifying ballistic missile attacks. He warned that deliveries to Ukraine were falling dangerously short as the Iran war diverts US stocks.”

AP added that despite all the assistance from Europe, “Ukraine cannot yet produce its own anti-missile defense systems, Zelenskyy said, and for that it relied ‘almost exclusively on the United States’”.

For all the rhetoric from Zelensky and European leaders about refusing to yield to Moscow, behind the scenes they have utilized Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich as a backchannel to Vladimir Putin. Zelensky confirmed in an interview with Sky News this week that Abramovich had travelled to Kyiv, with the oligarch telling him he had brought a direct message from Putin and wished to carry Ukraine’s response back to the Kremlin.

Abramovich, the former owner of London based Chelsea FC, remains under extensive Western sanctions, which, at the start of the conflict, forced him to relinquish Chelsea, with the £2.4 billion proceeds from its sale frozen by the then-Conservative government.