French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday met US President Donald Trump at the White House, where both leaders discussed key issues related to the Russia-Ukraine war.
However, when the two leaders were discussing their countries’ aid to Ukraine for the war during their joint meeting, Trump claimed that Europe had loaned military aid to Ukraine and was getting its money back. He said, “Europe is loaning the money to Ukraine, they’re getting their money back.”
Opon this, Macron promptly put his hand on Trump’s arm and corrected him, “No, in fact, to be frank, we paid 60 percent of the total effort: it was through, like the US, loans, guarantees, grants. We provided real money, to be clear.”
A video of the same conversation is going viral on social media.
Notable moment in the Oval Office where Trump says “Europe is loaning the money to Ukraine” and “they’re getting their money back” when Macron interrupted to say, “No, in fact, to be frank, we paid. We paid 60% of the total effort.” pic.twitter.com/QFzv9WhsIz
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) February 24, 2025
The French president asserted that the responsibility was on Russia to pay back the European aid to Ukraine. “If, at the end of the day, the negotiation we will have with Russia, they’re ready to give it to us, super, it will be a loan at the end of the day and Russia would have paid for that,” he said.
Macron also warned Trump against a ‘surrender’ of Ukraine as the US president said Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin ‘wants to make a deal’ that could include European peacekeepers.
Trump, who last week termed Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy a ‘dictator’ and falsely blamed Ukraine for starting the war, told reporters in the Oval Office that Putin would accept European peacekeepers in Ukraine as part of a potential deal to end the three-year conflict.
