French President Emmanuel Macron remained skeptical that Russian President Vladimir Putin is interested in ending the war in Ukraine.
Macron joined Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders on Monday at the White House, where President Donald Trump hosted a meeting to discuss a potential peace plan.
"When I look at the situation and the facts, I don't see President Putin very willing to get peace now," Macron told NBC News. "But perhaps I'm too pessimistic."
However, Macron added that Trump's optimism about ending the war "is to be taken seriously."
"So if he considers he can get a deal done, this is great news, and we have to do whatever we can to have a great deal," Macron told "Meet the Press" host Kristen Welker.
During the meeting, Macron said the idea of a trilateral meeting, involving the U.S., Russia and Ukraine, is "very important because this is the only way to fix it." However, he suggested Europe should also be involved, without specifying who should speak for Europe.
"As a follow-up, we would need the quadrilateral meeting because when we speak about security guarantees, we speak about the whole security of the European continent," Macron said, according to a press pool transcript of the meeting.
The French president told NBC News that the U.S. must apply pressure, even threaten more sanctions, to force Putin to end the war.
"There is an aggressor, which is Russia," Macron said. "There is a country which decided to kill people, stole children, and who refused a ceasefire and peace, so we cannot just create an equivalent situation between Ukraine and Russia."
He added that Ukraine must be given security guarantees to prevent any future Russian attacks.
"If you make any peace deal without security guarantees, Russia will never respect its words, will never comply with its own commitments," Macron said.
Macron also said there should not be any land swapping between Russia and Ukraine in a peace deal.
"I don't see any swap in the proposal of the Russians, except a swap in comparison with what they wanted at the beginning," he told Welker.
"Now, when we speak about territory, it's for the Ukrainian president and for the Ukrainian people to discuss about it."
Reuters contributed to this story.
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Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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