Russia-Ukraine War: Starmer Says UK, France To Lead 'Coalition Of Willing'
That was the result of Starmer's conversations with the Ukrainian president in Downing Street on Sunday and subsequent phone calls with Trump and France's Emmanuel Macron.
(Bloomberg) — Keir Starmer said the UK and France would lead a "coalition of the willing" to provide security guarantees for Ukraine and work on a plan to end the war with Russia, after the breakdown in relations between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
"We've now agreed that the UK along with France and possibly one of two others will work on a plan to stop the fighting and we’ll discuss that plan with the United States," the UK premier told the BBC on Sunday.
It would likely have to be a "coalition of the willing" — led by London and Paris — that works together on the security guarantees, rather than the whole of Europe, he added.
That was the result of Starmer's conversations with the Ukrainian president in Downing Street on Sunday and subsequent phone calls with Trump and France's Emmanuel Macron, he said.
"We have to bridge this," Starmer said. "We have to find a way that we can all work together, because in the end, we've had three years of bloody conflict. Now, we need to get to that lasting peace."
Commenting for the first time on the Oval Office debacle on Friday that saw Trump and Vice President JD Vance give Zelenskiy a dressing down, Starmer said: "I felt uncomfortable."
"Clearly there’s a lot of tension. The cameras were on. Nobody wants to see that," he said, adding that he didn’t think Zelenskiy had done anything wrong.
Asked if Trump had agreed to provide a US military backstop for any ceasefire agreement with Russia, Starmer said only that an American security guarantee was an "intense part of the discussion" with the president last week in Washington.
