By JOHN LEICESTER, Associated Press PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday that a proposed European armed force for possible deployment in Ukraine in tandem with an eventual peace deal could “respond” to a Russian attack if Moscow launched one. Macron spoke in the evening after talks with Ukraine’s president and ahead of a summit in Paris of some 30 nations on Thursday that will discuss the proposed force for Ukraine. “If there was again a generalized aggression against Ukrainian soil, these armies would be under attack and then it’s our usual framework of engagement,” Macron said. “Our soldiers, when they are engaged and deployed, are there to react and respond to the decisions of the commander in chief and, if they are in a conflict situation, to respond to it.” Macron. has been driving coalition-building efforts for a Ukraine force with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer. it is still far from clear exactly what kind of aid they are preparing that could contribute toward their goal of making any ceasefire with Russia lasting. Macron is expecting 31 delegations around the table Thursday morning at the presidential Elysee Palace. That’s more than Macron gathered for a first meeting in Paris in February — evidence that the coalition to help Ukraine, possibly with boots on the ground, is gathering steam, according to the presidential office. The big elephant in the room will be the country that’s missing: the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has shown no public enthusiasm for the coalition’s discussions about potentially sending troops into Ukraine after an eventual ceasefire to help make peace stick. Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has dismissed the idea of a European deployment or even the need for it. “It’s a combination of a posture and a pose and a combination of also being simplistic,” he said in an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. That’s not the view in Europe. The shared premise upon which the coalition is being built is that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine — starting with the illegal seizure of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and culminating in the 2022 full-scale invasion that unleashed all-out war — shows that he cannot be trusted. They believe that any peace deal will need to be backed up by security guarantees for Ukraine, to deter Putin from launching another attempt to seize it. ...read more read less