The U.K. and France will work with Ukraine to formulate a peace plan to be jointly presented to the Trump administration, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Sunday.
Starmer’s announcement came ahead of a meeting of European leaders in London as they seek to show unity following Friday’s unprecedented clash between the U.S. and Ukrainian presidents.
Starmer described the move as a “step in the right direction” after the emotional confrontation at the White House that shocked observers and Kyiv’s allies.
“We’ve now agreed that the U.K., along with France and possibly one or two others, will work with Ukraine on a plan to stop the fighting, and then we’ll discuss that plan with the United States,” he told the BBC.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited London on Saturday, hours after he was apparently asked to leave the White House by President Donald Trump’s team. Starmer said he had been in phone contact with Trump and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, before and after a long meeting with Zelenskyy.
Speaking to the BBC, he said that peace in Ukraine would have to consist of a strong Ukraine, European security guarantees, and some form of guarantee or “backstop” from the United States.
Starmer has regularly said that any ceasefire had to be underpinned by the U.S. to prevent Russian President Vladimir Putin from invading again.
“President Zelenskyy is rightly concerned that, if there is a deal, it has to hold,” he said. “That’s why we’ve talked extensively about the guarantees: in what way do we defend the deal if a deal is made.
“The worst of all outcomes is there is a temporary pause and then Putin comes again. That has happened in the past, and I think it is a real risk.”
Zelenskyy-Trump clash ‘uncomfortable’
Starmer described Friday’s heated scenes in the Oval Office as “uncomfortable” and repeated several times that “nobody wants to see that.”
He said he had telephoned Trump afterwards as “to my mind, the focus has to be on a lasting peace in Ukraine, which is really important for the defense of Europe and the United Kingdom.”
Asked about Trump’s attitude to Ukraine, he said: “My strong view is that he wants a lasting peace. And I agree with him about that. President Zelenskyy agrees with him about that, and I think nobody wants this conflict to go on.”
He added that a peace deal for Trump meant “a line that is agreed… and then that line is defended”.
European leaders would be discussing at Sunday’s talks what guarantees they could offer Kyiv, Starmer said, but stressed that any European provision would need a U.S. “backstop” in order to be an effective deterrent.
