Trump’s US will need to work with UK and Europe on Ukraine peace deal – minister
A US security ‘backstop’ along with British and European peacekeepers is needed to safeguard a peace deal, France and the UK believe.
The United States will have to work closely with the UK and Europe to deliver a lasting peace in Ukraine, a Cabinet minister said ahead of Sir Keir Starmer’s trip to Washington.
The transatlantic alliance has been put under severe strain by Donald Trump’s approach to ending the war, with the US president opening talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, branding Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator” and suggesting Kyiv’s forces were to blame for the conflict.
The Prime Minister’s visit to the White House later this week follows France’s Emmanuel Macron’s talks with Mr Trump on Monday as European nations seek to influence the US president’s views on the future of Ukraine.
Mr Macron suggested a truce between Russia and Ukraine could be possible within weeks, allowing time for more detailed peace negotiations.
The French president said he had worked with Sir Keir on plans to send a peacekeeping force to Ukraine to safeguard a lasting deal – as long as Mr Trump was also prepared to offer security guarantees.
He told Fox News: “We worked very hard together with the UK prime minister to have a French-UK proposal to say we are ready to send troops, not to go to the front line, not to go in confrontation, but to be in some locations, being defined by the treaty, as a presence to maintain this peace and our collective credibility with the US backup and the US backstop.”
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper suggested Sir Keir’s talks with Mr Trump would cover those issues.
“This is a very important stage in the discussions,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today.
“What we need to achieve is to get a lasting peace for Ukraine. And that has to mean that Ukraine has to be at the heart of this. You cannot have talks about Ukraine without Ukraine.
“And the US, the UK, Europe will need to work very closely together to ensure that we can make sure we can get that lasting peace for Ukraine, that it would have the security guarantees that we need.
“We know that means European countries need to do more, but we also need the security backstop with the US.”
A proposed deal to give the US access to Ukraine’s minerals could be one way to bind Washington to Kyiv.
Former prime minister Boris Johnson said there is “good stuff” in the latest draft of the deal and said the US would only benefit from it when there is a “free, sovereign and secure Ukraine”.
He told LBC that Ukrainians had “kept their cool” and “negotiated very hard” with Mr Trump after the initial rejection of a deal led to an “awful ratcheting up of the rhetoric against Ukraine”.
He suggested the US would not benefit from the deal unless lasting peace in Ukraine was secured.
Mr Johnson said: “There’s no way America is going to get its hands on any proceeds from Ukrainian minerals until there is a free, sovereign and secure Ukraine. That is a massive, massive prize, and I think, worth going for.”
The deal is about Mr Trump needing to show “the wackos who seem to support Putin … that he’s got something in exchange for American support and long term American support for Ukraine”.
