Ukraine-Russia war latest: Starmer warns Putin could reinvade Ukraine unless US provides security guarantees – UK Times

Sir Keir Starmer will push a reluctant Donald Trump to provide a US “backstop” to prevent Vladimir Putin launching a fresh assault on Ukraine after any peace deal.

The US President said he would not provide security guarantees “beyond very much”, insisting it was for Europeans to protect Ukraine.

Sir Keir is prepared to commit British troops to a peacekeeping mission but believes that US promises are vital to “deter Putin from coming again”.

Ahead of his talks at the White House on Thursday, Sir Keir said Mr Trump can be trusted and understands that Russian President Mr Putin started the war in Ukraine.

Volodymyr Zelensky will visit the White House on Friday to sign a minerals deal, Donald Trump said, though international agreement on possible peace talks remains far less clear.

The deal, under which Kyiv would hand some revenue from rare earth deposits in Ukraine to a fund jointly controlled by Washington, is central to President Zelensky’s attempts to win strong support as he seeks a quick end to Russia’s war.

Mr Trump hailed it as “a very big agreement” at the start of the first cabinet meeting of his second term, attended by unelected billionaire Elon Musk.

More in this report from Alastair Jamieson:

Speaking to journalists on the flight over the Atlantic, Sir Keir insisted that Russia’s Vladimir Putin has to be viewed as the aggressor.

He will make clear that there can be no negotiations about Ukraine without Ukraine, and will push for Europe to play a greater part in global defence.

Diplomats from Russia and the United States will meet in Istanbul on Thursday to discuss the operation of their respective embassies in Moscow and Washington, Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said yesterday.

The meeting follows Russia-US talks in Saudi Arabia last week that marked an extraordinary shift in US foreign policy under president Donald Trump and a clear departure from US-led efforts to isolate Russia over its war in Ukraine.

At the talks, Moscow and Washington agreed to start working toward ending the war and improving their diplomatic and economic ties. That includes restoring the staffing at embassies, which in recent years were hit hard by mutual expulsions of large numbers of diplomats and other restrictions.

A US Embassy official in Ankara confirmed that US and Russian delegations will hold talks in Istanbul today on issues affecting the operation of respective diplomatic missions.

The embassy official said Ukraine will not be on the agenda.

Kyiv is not going to discuss security guarantees in its minerals deal with Washington, president Volodymyr Zelensky said. They will be discussed in future rounds of negotiations with the US and other allies, he told journalists on Wednesday.

The deal, finalised on 25 February, aims to create a fund to which Ukraine will contribute 50 per cent of the proceeds from future monetisation of state-owned minerals, including oil, gas and logistics infrastructure.

In exchange, the agreement states that the US government “supports Ukraine’s efforts to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace”.

“I asked for an understanding that all this is part of the future security guarantees of Ukraine,” Mr Zelensky said of the deal, adding that he wanted “at least a sentence about security guarantees for Ukraine to appear in the agreement — and it did appear.”

The US president said Europe, rather than the US, would be mainly responsible for providing security guarantees to Ukraine.

“I’m not going to make security guarantees beyond very much — we’re going to have Europe do that because we’re talking about Europe is their nextdoor neighbor,” Mr Trump said.

The United States abstained from signing a statement by members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) condemning Russian aggression.

A total of 45 members, including Western allies and Ukraine, agreed to the WTO statement on 26 February.”The decision not to co-sponsor was made in keeping with our position in the United Nations Security Council and UN General Assembly earlier this week”, a US official told Reuters after the decision.

The statement, proposed during Ukraine’s Trade Policy Review, emphasised members’ concerns surrounding the “consequences of (the war’s) destruction for Ukraine and for global trade,” while explicitly naming Russia as the aggressor.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas will not meet with US secretary of state Marco Rubio during her trip to Washington this week, “due to scheduling issues”, her office has said.

Ms Kallas said on Monday that she would meet Mr Rubio during her trip this week to discuss efforts by Donald Trump’s new administration to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

European nations would have to send at least 100,000 troops to keep the peace in Ukraine and “none of them can do it”, a former head of the British armed forces has warned.

General Lord Richards called for Nato countries to be “very grown up” and “live within what is physically and militarily possible”, rather than “what our political leaders sometimes would aspire to do”.

The former chief of the defence staff warned it is “inevitable” that Russia will seek to test any defence force placed in Ukraine in the event of a deal to end the war. “If we send troops, they will be tested, and they have to robustly be able to defend themselves,” Lord Richards told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

He said given the size of the border between Russia and Ukraine a force of 100,000 to 200,000 troops would be needed. He added that these troops would need to be rotated, which could singificantly increase the number number that would be required to maintain the presence.

“The idea you are going to send a few peacekeepers with berets to reassure the Ukrainians is crass,” Lord Richards said. “We are talking, to do it robustly, 100,000 troops overall, drawn from European nations. None of them can do it,” he added.

Our political correspondent Archie Mitchell reports:

Our world affairs editor Sam Kiley writes:

Europe and the UK have outspent the US on Ukraine’s defence. According to the Kiel Institute, the US has spent close to €120bn (£99bn) on Ukraine, compared to nearly €130bn by the EU and UK.

As a proportion of GDP, based on statistics from December last year, the institute said the US, UK and Germany were spending less than 0.2 per cent of their GDP on Ukraine – and many Ukrainian allies were chipping in with less than 0.1 per cent.

Trump claims the US has spent $350bn on Ukraine. This is a lie – but he wants it back, so he’s demanding about three times the “cost” of US support for defending democracy.