European leaders praise Trump for offering US military support for future peace force in Ukraine

BRUSSELS (AP) — European leaders have praised President Donald Trump for agreeing to allow U.S. military support for a force they are mustering to police any future peace in Ukraine — a move that vastly improves the chances of success for an operation that could prove essential for the country's security.

The leaders said Trump offered American military backup for the European “reassurance force” during a call they held with him ahead of his planned summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday. They did not say what the assistance might involve, and Trump himself has not publicly confirmed any support.

The effectiveness of the operation, drawn up by the coalition of about 30 countries supporting Ukraine, hinges on the deterrent effect of U.S. airpower or other military equipment that European armed forces do not have, or have only in short supply.

No U.S. troops would be involved, but the threat of American airpower, if needed, behind the European force would likely help to dissuade Russian troops from testing Europe's resolve.

Senior Russian officials have repeatedly rejected the idea of European peacekeepers in Ukraine, even though a traditional U.N.-style peacekeeping force is not being planned.

EU leaders have regularly underlined how the United States is “crucial” to the success of the security operation dubbed Multinational Force Ukraine. But the Trump administration has long refused to commit, perhaps keeping its participation on hold as leverage in talks with Russia.

After a meeting Wednesday between Trump and European leaders, European Council President Antonio Costa welcomed “the readiness of the United States to share with Europe the efforts to reinforce security conditions once we obtain a durable and just peace for Ukraine.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said Trump insisted that NATO cannot be part of such security guarantees, but he said the U.S. leader agreed that “the United States and all the (other) parties involved should take part.”

“It’s a very important clarification,” Macron said.

No details of possible U.S. support were made public. U.S. Vice President JD Vance sat in on the coalition meeting for the first time.

More than 200 military planners have worked for months on ways to ensure a future peace should the war, now in its fourth year, finally end. Ukraine’s armed forces also have been involved, and British personnel have led reconnaissance work inside Ukraine.

The exact size of the force has not been made public, although Britain has said it could number 10,000 to 30,000 troops. It must be enough to deter Russian forces, but also of a realistic size for nations that shrank their militaries after the Cold War and are now rearming.

The mission “will be to strengthen Ukraine’s defenses on the land, at sea and in the air because the Ukrainian Armed Forces are the best deterrent against future Russian aggression,” U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey told lawmakers last month. Western trainers will work with Ukrainian troops.

“It will secure Ukraine’s skies by using aircraft,” Healey said, “and it will support safer seas by bolstering the Black Sea Task Force with additional specialist teams.”

Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey launched that naval force a year ago to deal with mines in Black Sea waters.

The force initially will have its headquarters in Paris before moving to London next year. A coordination headquarters in Kyiv will be involved once hostilities cease and it deploys.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recently said peacekeepers in Ukraine would be just as “unacceptable” for Moscow as Ukraine’s membership in NATO.

“The appearance of troops, armed forces from the same NATO countries, but under a foreign flag, under the flag of the European Union or national flags, does not change anything in this regard. This is, of course, unacceptable to us,” Lavrov said.

European efforts to set up the force have been seen as a first test of the continent’s willingness to defend itself and its interests, given Trump administration warnings that Europe must take care of its own security and that of Ukraine in future.

Still, U.S. forces clearly provide a deterrent that the Europeans cannot muster.

Details of what the U.S. might contribute were unknown, and Trump has changed his mind in the past, so it remains to be seen whether this signal will be enough to persuade more countries in the coalition to provide troops.

Greece has publicly rejected doing so. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said last month that those discussions were “somewhat divisive” and distracted from the goal of ending the war as soon as possible.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has said Rome will not contribute troops, but she previously has underlined the importance of working with the U.S. on ending the conflict and called for the participation of an American delegation in force coordination meetings.

NATO membership would be Ukraine's best security guarantee, but the Trump administration took that possibility off the table in February. Putin is deeply opposed to Ukraine joining the world's biggest military alliance, and some allies fear it might drag NATO into a broader war with nuclear-armed Russia.

Associated Press writers Emma Burrows in London and Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, contributed to this report.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, center left, is welcomed by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz upon arrival in the garden of the chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025 to join a video conference of European leaders with the U.S. President on the Ukraine war. (John MacDougall/Pool Photo via AP)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attends a joint press statement with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz following talks with European and U.S. leaders in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz attend a video meeting of European leaders with US President Donald Trump on the Ukraine war in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025, ahead of the summit between the US and Russian leaders. (John MacDougall/Pool Photo via AP)

French President Emmanuel Macron, left, Antonio Costa, President of the European Council, second left, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot, third right, and French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu, attend a video conference on Ukraine at the Fort de Bregancon in Bormes-les-Mimosas, southern France, Wednesday Aug.13, 2025. (Philippe Magoni, Pool via AP)

French President Emmanuel Macron, right, and Antonio Costa, President of the European Council, attend a statement following a video conference on Ukraine at the Fort de Bregancon in Bormes-les-Mimosas, southern France, Wednesday Aug.13, 2025. (Philippe Magoni, Pool via AP)

Federal immigration agents deployed to Minneapolis have used aggressive crowd-control tactics that have become a dominant concern in the aftermath of the deadly shooting of a woman in her car last week.

They have pointed rifles at demonstrators and deployed chemical irritants early in confrontations. They have broken vehicle windows and pulled occupants from cars. They have scuffled with protesters and shoved them to the ground.

The government says the actions are necessary to protect officers from violent attacks. The encounters in turn have riled up protesters even more, especially as videos of the incidents are shared widely on social media.

What is unfolding in Minneapolis reflects a broader shift in how the federal government is asserting its authority during protests, relying on immigration agents and investigators to perform crowd-management roles traditionally handled by local police who often have more training in public order tactics and de-escalating large crowds.

Experts warn the approach runs counter to de-escalation standards and risks turning volatile demonstrations into deadly encounters.

The confrontations come amid a major immigration enforcement surge ordered by the Trump administration in early December, which sent more than 2,000 officers from across the Department of Homeland Security into the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Many of the officers involved are typically tasked with arrests, deportations and criminal investigations, not managing volatile public demonstrations.

Tensions escalated after the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman killed by an immigration agent last week, an incident federal officials have defended as self-defense after they say Good weaponized her vehicle.

The killing has intensified protests and scrutiny of the federal response.

On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota asked a federal judge to intervene, filing a lawsuit on behalf of six residents seeking an emergency injunction to limit how federal agents operate during protests, including restrictions on the use of chemical agents, the pointing of firearms at non-threatening individuals and interference with lawful video recording.

“There’s so much about what’s happening now that is not a traditional approach to immigration apprehensions,” said former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldaña.

Saldaña, who left the post at the beginning of 2017 as President Donald Trump's first term began, said she can't speak to how the agency currently trains its officers. When she was director, she said officers received training on how to interact with people who might be observing an apprehension or filming officers, but agents rarely had to deal with crowds or protests.

“This is different. You would hope that the agency would be responsive given the evolution of what’s happening — brought on, mind you, by the aggressive approach that has been taken coming from the top,” she said.

Ian Adams, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of South Carolina, said the majority of crowd-management or protest training in policing happens at the local level — usually at larger police departments that have public order units.

“It’s highly unlikely that your typical ICE agent has a great deal of experience with public order tactics or control,” Adams said.

DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a written statement that ICE officer candidates receive extensive training over eight weeks in courses that include conflict management and de-escalation. She said many of the candidates are military veterans and about 85% have previous law enforcement experience.

“All ICE candidates are subject to months of rigorous training and selection at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, where they are trained in everything from de-escalation tactics to firearms to driving training. Homeland Security Investigations candidates receive more than 100 days of specialized training," she said.

Ed Maguire, a criminology professor at Arizona State University, has written extensively about crowd-management and protest- related law enforcement training. He said while he hasn't seen the current training curriculum for ICE officers, he has reviewed recent training materials for federal officers and called it “horrifying.”

Maguire said what he's seeing in Minneapolis feels like a perfect storm for bad consequences.

“You can't even say this doesn't meet best practices. That's too high a bar. These don't seem to meet generally accepted practices,” he said.

“We’re seeing routinely substandard law enforcement practices that would just never be accepted at the local level,” he added. “Then there seems to be just an absence of standard accountability practices.”

Adams noted that police department practices have "evolved to understand that the sort of 1950s and 1960s instinct to meet every protest with force, has blowback effects that actually make the disorder worse.”

He said police departments now try to open communication with organizers, set boundaries and sometimes even show deference within reason. There's an understanding that inside of a crowd, using unnecessary force can have a domino effect that might cause escalation from protesters and from officers.

Despite training for officers responding to civil unrest dramatically shifting over the last four decades, there is no nationwide standard of best practices. For example, some departments bar officers from spraying pepper spray directly into the face of people exercising Constitutional speech. Others bar the use of tear gas or other chemical agents in residential neighborhoods.

Regardless of the specifics, experts recommend that departments have written policies they review regularly.

“Organizations and agencies aren’t always familiar with what their own policies are,” said Humberto Cardounel, senior director of training and technical assistance at the National Policing Institute.

“They go through it once in basic training then expect (officers) to know how to comport themselves two years later, five years later," he said. "We encourage them to understand and know their training, but also to simulate their training.”

Adams said part of the reason local officers are the best option for performing public order tasks is they have a compact with the community.

“I think at the heart of this is the challenge of calling what ICE is doing even policing,” he said.

"Police agencies have a relationship with their community that extends before and after any incidents. Officers know we will be here no matter what happens, and the community knows regardless of what happens today, these officers will be here tomorrow.”

Saldaña noted that both sides have increased their aggression.

“You cannot put yourself in front of an armed officer, you cannot put your hands on them certainly. That is impeding law enforcement actions,” she said.

“At this point, I’m getting concerned on both sides — the aggression from law enforcement and the increasingly aggressive behavior from protesters.”

Law enforcement officers at the scene of a reported shooting Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)

Federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)

People cover tear gas deployed by federal immigration officers outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)

A man is pushed to the ground as federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/John Locher)

A woman covers her face from tear gas as federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)