Sir Keir Starmer will ramp up efforts to support Ukraine after warning Donald Trump that any peace talks with Vladimir Putin must involve Kyiv.
The UK Govt is mobilising with allies to ensure Ukraine is not cut out of a US-Russia agreed peace plan ahead of crunch talks on Friday.
Starmer joined with European leaders to insist Ukraine, and Europe, are central to any deal reached between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the scheduled summit.
The PM, with the leaders of France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Finland and the European Commission, said on Saturday “the path to peace […] cannot be decided without Ukraine” and stressed “international borders must not be changed by force”.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy hosted a meeting of top Ukrainian officials and European national security advisers alongside US vice-president JD Vance earlier on Saturday.
JD Vance and David Lammy during a meeting at Chevening House, the Foreign Secretary’s Grade summer residence near Sevenoaks in Kent, where Lammy is hosting the Vance family (Photo: Suzanne Plunkett/WPA Pool/Getty)A No10 source told The i Paper the meetings were “constructive, and productive”.
“Support for Ukraine remains unwavering, as does firm belief that the path to peace must be decided with Ukraine,” the source said.
They said the US was “rightly credited” for having “enabled a strong platform for progress”.
“The PM will continue to work with allies over the coming days ahead of US Russia talks on Friday,” they added.
“He will be playing his full part in seizing this opportunity to bring an end to this illegal war and peace for the Ukrainian people.”
It is understood there is no scheduled meeting of the so-called coalition of the willing peacekeeping initiative, led by the UK and France, due to take place this week.
But EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas will convene a meeting of European foreign ministers on Monday to discuss next steps, as she insisted Ukraine and the EU must be involved in any deal.
“The US has the power to force Russia to negotiate seriously. Any deal between the US and Russia must have Ukraine and the EU included, for it is a matter of Ukraine’s and the whole of Europe’s security,” Kallas told Reuters.
Kallas added that “international law is clear: all temporarily occupied territories belong to Ukraine”.
It will be up to Trump – and Trump alone – to secure a peace deal that Ukraine can live with (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)Trump announced will meet Putin in Alaska, having earlier suggested that any peace deal was likely to involve “some swapping of territories”.
But President Volodymyr Zelensky has already rejected any proposal that would compromise Ukraine’s territorial integrity, something that is forbidden by Ukraine’s constitution.
In a joint statement issued on Saturday night, European leaders welcomed Trump’s “work to stop the killing in Ukraine, end the Russian Federation’s war of aggression and achieve just and lasting peace and security for Ukraine”.
Adding that they were “ready to support this work diplomatically” and through military and financial support for Kyiv, they reiterated the need for “robust and credible security guarantees” for Ukraine and their own “unwavering support” for the country.
The UK government is treading a careful line between being supportive of any progress towards peace whilst firmly opposing suggestion that Ukraine could be forced to surrender territory
The position of Starmer, and his fellow leaders, puts him at odds with reports coming out of the US that Trump is hoping to persuade European countries that a deal could see Russia taking Ukrainian territory.
According to CBS, this could mean Ukraine surrendering the Donbas region in the east of the country as well as allowing Russia to keep the Crimean Peninsula, which it invaded in 2014.
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Dr Melanie Garson, a lecturer in conflict resolution and international security at University College London (UCL) suggested the diverging views on Ukraine between the US and UK could enable them to operate a “good cop/bad cop” negotiation style.
Garson told The i Paper the US-Russia meeting was an attempt to “get things back on track” and that Zelensky’s exclusion may be tactical.
“It may also be that having Zelensky at the table at this stage is premature as given Trump has met Zelensky 1:1 recently – he has to accord Putin the same opportunity before making it a multilateral process,” she said.
She added that Trump’s statements on territory swapping “are intentionally vague as he probably knows they are unlikely”.
Sir Tony Brenton, former British ambassador to Russia, told Sky News that he did not think the intervention by Ukraine’s European allies was “proving very helpful”.
“The Europeans seem to have taken to enunciating grand moral principles without thinking about what is particularly negotiable,” he said.
“They’ve said, for example, ‘we will never recognise changing borders by force’. Russia took Crimea by force. They’re never going to give it back barring a huge defeat on the battlefield, so what do you do about that? Do you adjust to the reality or do you insist on the principle?”
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