LONDON (Reuters) -Britain and France will work on a peace deal with Ukraine and present it to Donald Trump, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Sunday, describing it as a step in the right direction following Friday’s explosive meeting in the White House.
Starmer, due to host Western leaders in London in a bid to revive a peace deal, said he hoped a European “coalition of the willing” would come together to support Kyiv, but that any ceasefire had to be underpinned by the United States to prevent Russian President Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine again.
“In other words, we’ve got to find those countries in Europe that are prepared to be a bit more forward leaning,” he told BBC television.
“The UK and France are the most advanced on the thinking of this and that is why President Macron and I are working on this plan, which we will then discuss with the U.S.”
Starmer spoke to Macron and Trump on Saturday after he hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Downing Street, a day after Trump and Zelenskiy clashed in an extraordinary meeting at the White House.
Starmer repeated his assertion that a peace deal would only work in Ukraine if a possible European peacekeeping force had a security guarantee from the United States.
“I’ve always been clear that that is going to need a U.S. backstop, because I don’t think it would be a guarantee without it,” he said.
(Reporting by Andrew MacAskill and Kate Holton, writing by Elizabeth Piper)
