Starmer to welcome Zelensky to No 10 ahead of Trump meeting with Putin
The Prime Minister's meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky comes after he said Britain stands ready to "increase pressure" on Russia if necessary.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer
(Image: Toby Melville -)
Sir Keir Starmer will be joined by the Ukrainian president at Downing Street on Thursday morning, as Europe braces for the outcome of Donald Trump's face-to-face discussions with his Russian counterpart later this week.
The Prime Minister's meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky comes after he said Britain stands ready to "increase pressure" on Russia if necessary.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump threatened Russia with "severe consequences" if a ceasefire was rejected by its leader.
During a call with the US president and European allies on Wednesday, Sir Keir praised Mr Trump for his work to bring forward a "viable" chance of an end to the war.
But concerns have been raised over Mr Zelensky's exclusion from the meeting between the Mr Trump and Mr Putin, which is set to take place in Alaska on Friday.
Speaking on Wednesday, Sir Keir said: "This meeting on Friday that President Trump is attending is hugely important.
Article continues below
"As I've said personally to President Trump for the three-and-a-bit years this conflict has been going on, we haven't got anywhere near a prospect of actually a viable solution, a viable way of bringing it to a ceasefire.
"And now we do have that chance, because of the work of that the president has put in."
Further sanctions could be imposed on Russia should the Kremlin fail to engage, and the UK is already working on its next package of measures targeting Moscow, he said.
"We're ready to support this, including from the plans we've already drawn up to deploy a reassurance force once hostilities have ceased," he told allies.
"It is important to remind colleagues that we do stand ready also to increase pressure on Russia, particularly the economy, with sanctions and wider measures as may be necessary."
Sir Keir and European leaders have repeatedly said discussions about Ukraine should not happen without it, amid concerns the country is being sidelined in negotiations about its own future.
Asked if it was his decision to not invite Mr Zelensky to the meeting, Mr Trump said "no just the opposite", before adding that a second meeting with the Ukrainian president could take place afterwards.
"We had a very good call, he was on the call, President Zelensky was on the call. I would rate it a 10, you know, very, very friendly," he told reporters in Washington.
He added: "There's a very good chance that we're going to have a second meeting which will be more productive than the first, because the first is I'm going to find out where we are and what we're doing."
The US president has previously suggested a truce could involve some "swapping" of land.
It is believed one of the Russian leader's demands is for Ukraine to cede parts of the Donbas region which it still controls.
But Mr Zelensky has already rejected any proposal that would compromise Ukraine's territorial integrity, something that is forbidden by the country's constitution.
Article continues below
A joint statement from the Coalition of the Willing, which is co-chaired by Sir Keir, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, said "international borders must not be changed by force".
It added: "Sanctions and wider economic measures to put pressure on Russia's war economy should be strengthened if Russia does not agree to a ceasefire in Alaska."
The Coalition of the Willing is a European-led effort to send a peacekeeping force to Ukraine in the event of truce.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Spectator
an hour ago
- Spectator
The uncomfortable history of Narva
The Alaska talks between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin might have happened on American territory, but the symbolism of their location is a win for the Russian President. Alaska is considerably closer to Russia than it is to the rest of mainland America, and it was once a Russian territory. Putin was returning to a land previously conquered by his people. On Russia's opposite border, to the west, it is Russia's imperial past, and Putin's twisted view of shared history, that worries Europeans. Narva, Estonia's third largest city, is a strange place, and seems even stranger since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Narva river – from which the city gets its name – separates Estonia from Russia; two fortresses stand across each other imposing on the landscape, the 13th century Hermann Castle on the Estonian side and the 15th century Ivangorod Fortress on the Russian side. Two other symbols of Russian influence are hard to miss in the town: the Orthodox Church, and a now abandoned 19th century textiles factory that suffered in the years following the collapse of the USSR. Over 90 per cent of Narva's population speak Russian. This worries many Estonians, who think Putin could invade under the pretext of protecting this minority. For years, Estonia's Russian minority wasn't considered problematic. That has changed since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Estonia has begun phasing out Russian as a first language in education and it plans to remove the voting rights of foreign citizens in local elections. In Narva, long queues now form at the aptly named 'Friendship Bridge' – a 162 mile Soviet-era bridge that links Estonia to Russia. Vehicle travel was banned in 2024, and it can take hours to cross now. In recent weeks, Estonia has begun installing metal gates on the bridge for further deterrence. One-hundred-and-thirty miles away in Tallinn, Estonia's modern, bustling and charming capital, opposition to Russia is hard to avoid. The Russian Embassy is in the centre of town and the makeshift riot fences, protecting the building from protestors, are plastered with posters. 'Putin is a Killer' stands out among a sea of red handprints and pictures of the late Alexei Navalny. A smattering of protestors gather every week outside the embassy to protest. This isn't new. It started in 2008 following the Russian invasion of Georgia, but has grown in size since. There are many reminders of Estonia's Soviet past. One of the most imposing buildings on the Tallinn skyline is the high-rise Hotel Viru. The rectangular 1970s block is a prefab building built in 1972 that stands imposing on the outskirts of the old city walls. The hotel is still in use, but it's more popular for the secrets held on its top floor – once upon a time it was the unofficial headquarters of the KGB in Estonia. The floor was out of bounds and, with only foreign dignitaries and visitors allowed to stay in the hotel. It was an open secret that rooms were bugged. In the confusion of the early 1990s as the USSR fell, KGB operatives slowly snuck out of the hotel. Locals were so terrified that it was weeks before they accessed the top floors to discover the spying devices and records left behind. Earlier this year when I toured the building, my Estonian guide told me he felt he could say 'with certainty' that 'the USSR is back'. It sounded like hyperbole, but only this week Estonia declared a Russian diplomat persona non grata. The Baltic memory of Russian espionage runs deep. Estonia became an independent sovereign nation in 1991 for only the second time in its history; both times bookended by Russia, with the former being the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1919. The pattern is the same for its Baltic neighbours Lithuania and Latvia. This history of Russian interference in the Baltics is why Estonians are still uneasy. The Baltic governments of the post-Soviet era were determined not to repeat the mistakes of their first period of collective independence. The countries were swallowed up by the USSR during the second world war and debate still rages between the Baltics, who view it as an occupation, and the Russians, who argue they protected them from the Nazis. The violence and oppression across the Baltics at the hands of the Soviets was so bad that many citizens quietly celebrated when the Nazis occupied them for several years in the middle of the war, though this isn't something many would be keen to highlight. The post-war period heralded almost half a century of Soviet occupation. Once the USSR fell, the Baltic nations lobbied, and fiercely planned, to turn west – and, less than a decade later, they joined both the EU and Nato on the same day. This is what has set the three nations apart from other former parts of the USSR which have faced continuous Russian interference – namely Ukraine and Georgia. The Russian threat for the Baltics remains, however. Estonia and Latvia are vulnerable across their eastern borders with Russia; Lithuania's longest border is with Belarus; and the exclave of Kaliningrad (between Lithuania and Poland) is just 40 miles from the Russian-backed autocracy. An incursion across this strip, the Suwalki Gap, would cut the Baltic nations off from the rest of Europe in one fell swoop. Half a century of Baltic history was determined by the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the carving up of Europe between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Many Europeans have long feared that Putin will seek to do similar with Trump. For Estonians, suddenly Alaska doesn't seem so far away.
The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
US envoy says Putin agreed to protections for Ukraine as part of Trump summit
Mr Witkoff said it was the first time he had heard Mr Putin agree to that. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, speaking at a news conference in Brussels with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, said that 'we welcome President Trump's willingness to contribute to Article 5-like security guarantees for Ukraine, and the 'Coalition of the willing' – including the European Union – is ready to do its share'. White House envoy Steve Witkoff (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP) Mr Witkoff, offering some of the first details of what was discussed at Friday's summit in Alaska, said the two sides agreed to 'robust security guarantees that I would describe as game-changing'. He added that Russia said that it would make a legislative commitment not to go after any additional territory in Ukraine. Mr Zelensky thanked the United States for recent signals that Washington is willing to support security guarantees for Ukraine, but said the details remained unclear. 'It is important that America agrees to work with Europe to provide security guarantees for Ukraine,' he said. 'But there are no details how it will work, and what America's role will be, Europe's role will be and what the EU can do, and this is our main task, we need security to work in practice like Article 5 of Nato, and we consider EU accession to be part of the security guarantees.' Mr Witkoff defended Mr Trump's decision to abandon his push for Russia to agree to an immediate ceasefire, saying the president had pivoted toward a peace deal because so much progress was made. 'We covered almost all the other issues necessary for a peace deal,' Mr Witkoff said, without elaborating. 'We began to see some moderation in the way they're thinking about getting to a final peace deal,' he said. US secretary of state Marco Rubio said there would be 'additional consequences' as Mr Trump warned before meeting Mr Putin, if they failed to reach a ceasefire. But Mr Rubio said there was not going to be any sort of deal on a truce reached when Ukraine was not at the talks. 'Now, ultimately, if there isn't a peace agreement, if there isn't an end of this war, the president's been clear, there are going to be consequences,' Mr Rubio said on ABC. 'But we're trying to avoid that. And the way we're trying to avoid those consequences is with an even better consequence, which is peace, the end of hostilities.' US secretary of state Marco Rubio said there remained 'some big areas of disagreement' between the parties (Jae C Hong/AP) Mr Rubio, who is also Mr Trump's national security adviser, said he did not believe issuing new sanctions on Russia would force Mr Putin to accept a ceasefire, noting that the latter was not off the table but that 'the best way to end this conflict is through a full peace deal'. 'The minute you issue new sanctions, your ability to get them to the table, our ability to get them to table will be severely diminished,' Mr Rubio said on NBC. He also said 'we're not at the precipice of a peace agreement' and that getting there would not be easy and would take a lot of work. 'We made progress in the sense that we identified potential areas of agreement, but there remains some big areas of disagreement. So we're still a long ways off,' Mr Rubio said.
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Girl, 11, dies in tragic water incident at Cornwall beauty spot
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story. The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it. Your support makes all the difference.
