Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer during a meeting in Kyiv, Ukraine, 16 January 2025, Photo: EPA-EFE / SERGEY DOLZHENKO
Writing in The Telegraph on Monday, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer indicated the UK’s readiness to deploy troops to Ukraine to ensure the country’s security and help implement any future peace agreement.
Starmer insisted that, while any such decision would not be taken lightly, helping to guarantee Ukraine’s security would also help guarantee the security of both the UK and Europe as a whole.
Calling on other European NATO members to increase defence spending and take on a greater role within the defence alliance, Starmer stressed that US support would remain critical and that a US security guarantee would be an essential prerequisite for a lasting peace in Ukraine.
Starmer’s op-ed was published amid rising tensions between the US and Europe over what appears to be US President Donald Trump’s attempt to sideline his European allies ahead of eventual Ukrainian peace negotiations, and on the same days as a hastily convened emergency meeting with other European leaders was due to take place in Paris to discuss the issue.
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, said that he did not envisage Europe’s presence at peace talks, demonstrating a growing divide between the US and Europe.
A day earlier, US Vice President J.D. Vance stunned delegates at the conference by claiming in his speech that the biggest security threat to Europe came from its “retreat from some of its most fundamental values” and argued that the continent should “step up in a big way to provide for its own defence”.
