European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, right, and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy participate in a media conference at EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on Sunday. (AP Photo)

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — European and NATO leaders announced Sunday they will join President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Washington to present a united front in talks with President Donald Trump on ending Russia’s war in Ukraine and firming up U.S. security guarantees now on the negotiating table.

Leaders from Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Finland are rallying around the Ukrainian president after his exclusion from Trump’s summit on Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Their pledge to be at Zelenskyy’s side at the White House today is an apparent effort to ensure the meeting goes better than the last one in February, when Trump berated Zelenskyy in a heated Oval Office encounter.

“The Europeans are very afraid of the Oval Office scene being repeated and so they want to support Mr. Zelenskyy to the hilt,” said retired French Gen. Dominique Trinquand, a former head of France’s military mission at the United Nations.

“It’s a power struggle and a position of strength that might work with Trump,” he said.

Putin agreed at his summit in Alaska with Trump that the U.S. and its European allies could offer Ukraine a security guarantee resembling NATO’s collective defense mandate as part of an eventual deal to end the 3 1/2-year war, special U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff said in an interview Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

It “was the first time we had ever heard the Russians agree to that,” said Witkoff, who called it “game-changing.”

Later, French President Emmanuel Macron said the European delegation will ask Trump to back plans they drafted to beef-up Ukraine’s armed forces — already Europe’s largest outside of Russia — with more training and equipment to secure any peace.

“We need a credible format for the Ukrainian army, that’s the first point, and say — we Europeans and Americans — how we’ll train them, equip them, and finance this effort in the long-term,” the French leader said.

The European-drafted plans also envision an allied force in Ukraine away from the front lines to reassure Kyiv that peace will hold and to dissuade another Russian invasion, Macron said. He spoke after a nearly two-hour video call Sunday with nations in Europe and further afield — including Canada, Australia and Japan — that are involved in the so-called “coalition of the willing.”

The “several thousand men on the ground in Ukraine in the zone of peace” would signal that “our fates are linked,” Macron said.

“This is what we must discuss with the Americans: Who is ready to do what?” Macron said. “Otherwise, I think the Ukrainians simply cannot accept commitments that are theoretical.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said earlier at a news conference in Brussels with Zelenskyy that “we welcome President Trump’s willingness to contribute to Article 5-like security guarantees for Ukraine. And the ‘coalition of the willing’ — including the European Union — is ready to do its share.”

Macron said the substance of security guarantees will be more important than whether they are given an Article 5-type label.

“A theoretical article isn’t enough, the question is one of substance,” he said. “We must start out by saying that the first of the security guarantees for Ukraine is a strong Ukrainian army.”

Along with Von der Leyen and Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and Finnish President Alexander Stubb also said they’ll will take part in today’s talks, as will secretary-general of the NATO military alliance, Mark Rutte.