Europe is rushing to provide Ukraine with alternatives to Elon Musk’s Starlink broadband satellite network, after the US withdrew military aid and intelligence sharing from the country this week.

But Trump has given no indication he is prepared to offer assistance to ensure any agreement holds. European promises to re-arm — the president has been telling the continent to stop freeriding on US guarantees for the best part of a decade — may have come too late.

“The minerals agreement is only part of the picture. We have heard multiple times from the US administration that it’s part of a bigger picture,” Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister and justice minister who has led the negotiations, told the Financial Times on Tuesday.

Let’s be clear, the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine is horrible. For 11 years, I have documented the war’s cost. With the full-scale invasion three years ago, my organisation established a network of human rights defenders to record mass atrocities — from the dead on the streets in Bucha to the mass graves in Izium.

The summit follows a fortnight of frantic shuttle diplomacy between Washington, London and Paris by Europe’s most senior leaders, in an attempt to both devise a European “peace plan” potentially involving troops on the ground in Ukraine, and keep Trump engaged in supporting Ukraine and protecting Europe.

Trump poised to grab Ukraine minerals on linkedin (opens in a new window)

The step follows the decision on Monday by Donald Trump’s administration to suspend military aid deliveries to Ukraine and comes after a dramatic breakdown in relations between the US president ...

Simply sign up to the War in Ukraine myFT Digest -- delivered directly to your inbox ... their military experience in Russia’s previous wars, more urgency in solving financial or legal problems, or the fact that older Russians statistically spend ...

Keir Starmer held an online meeting with President Alar Karis of Estonia, Prime Minister Evika Siliņa of Latvia and President Gitanas Nausėda of Lithuania on Sunday morning and “underlined his focus on securing a lasting peace in Ukraine that ensures their future sovereignty, backed up by strong security guarantees”.

Gideon Rachman So I guess the danger for Ukraine is that Putin nominally agrees to a ceasefire, Trump says war is over, keeps and then breaks the ceasefire, and Trump in his way, blames the Ukrainians and says, well, I’m not going to come in anyway, you know.