President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said any effective peacekeeping force deployed in Ukraine will need to include US troops, as he appealed to Donald Trump ahead of talks with Russia.

In an interview with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait, Zelenskiy said that his European allies don’t have enough soldiers to pose a realistic deterrent to President Vladimir Putin and any other solution would risk opening up divisions within the NATO alliance.

As Trump reaches out to Putin, Zelenskiy is trying to persuade China too to use its influence on Russia to help end the fighting, though he expressed frustration that he hasn’t managed to speak more often to President Xi Jinping.

“He can push Putin for peace, I’m sure,” he said. “President Trump is the strongest — and Xi Jinping. I think there’s no other ally who can really do it. His economy, Putin, depends very much on China.”

As officials in Washington and Kyiv start to work out the details of how they can bring Putin to the table and what the structure of a deal should look like, one clear divide is emerging over Ukraine’s willingness to mobilize more troops.

Officials from the US and other western allies have been urging Ukraine to lower the age of conscription while Zelenskiy insists there’s more need for guns and missiles than for more soldiers.

“Why mobilize even younger people,” he said, “So that there are even more people without weapons?”

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