President Emmanuel Macron will gather the leaders of his country's political parties on Thursday in Paris to discuss the issues in Ukraine and possible increases in defence spending.
The meeting at the Elysée Palace with representatives from across the political spectrum comes as the American and Russian presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin posture to construct a peace deal for Ukraine without input from their Ukrainian counterpart Vlodymyr Zelensky as well as the European Union.
On Wednesday, Macron concluded two days of meetings European leaders. He emerged from those talks to declare that there was a strong convergence in saying that Russia constituted an existential threat to Europeans.
"We want a lasting and solid peace in Ukraine," Macron added.
Trump has ruled out returning Ukraine to its pre-2014 borders - before the annexation of Crimea and the Russian conquest of the east of the country. Trump has also ruled out Ukraine's entry into the security defence bloc Nato and the deployment of American soldiers to guarantee peace.
Troops
Macron said on Tuesday that France was not preparing to send ground troops to the front line. But he also raised the possibility of having, under a UN mandate, a peacekeeping operation, which would stand along the front line.
Sophie Primas, the French government spokeswoman, said: "Europe will have to wake up by increasing military spending. This will have consequences for our public finances."
Europeans fear that Putin will be encouraged to continue his offensive in Ukraine, and even to extend it to neighbouring countries if he is not forced to make a peace which includes the deployment of foreign forces along a demarcation line.
Zelensky is due to meet the US envoy Keith Kellogg on Thursday less than a day after Trump branded Zelensky a dictator and said Russia would be in a strong position in any talks to end the war.
"I think the Russians want to see the war end... But I think they have the cards a little bit, because they've taken a lot of territory, so they have the cards," Trump told reporters.
Under former President Joe Biden, the US lauded Zelensky as a hero and hammered Moscow with sanctions as Ukraine battled against advancing Russian troops.
Criticism
But Trump has been critical. He claimed Zelensky had subverted democracy and blamed him for starting the war that began with Russia's full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022.
"A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Zelensky's popularity has fallen, but the percentage of Ukrainians who trust him has never dipped below 50 percent since the conflict started, according to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS).
Trump's invective drew shock from Europe where German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said it was wrong and dangerous to call Zelensky a dictator.
In Washington, Trump's former vice president Mike Pence also issued a rebuke.
"Mr. President, Ukraine did not 'start' this war. Russia launched an unprovoked and brutal invasion claiming hundreds of thousands of lives," he wrote on X.
