Donald Trump has ruled out a ceasefire in Ukraine as Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his European allies visited the White House. The US president said he had called Putin and begun arrangements for a meeting between the Russian president and Ukrainian leader, saying, ‘all of us would obviously prefer an immediate ceasefire … as of this moment it’s not happening’. However, the leaders of France and Germany refused to accept defeat on the issue. Friedrich Merz, the chancellor of Germany, insisted that ‘we would all like to see a ceasefire’ and he could not imagine the next meeting taking place without one. Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, also backed the idea of a ‘truce’ as a ‘necessity’.