LONDON (Reuters) -Prime Minister Keir Starmer will host a virtual meeting of world leaders to discuss Ukraine on Saturday, building on a summit in London this month when the British leader announced the formation of a “coalition of the willing” to support Kyiv.
Britain and France are working on a plan to provide a peacekeeping force in Ukraine, if an agreement to pause the war with Russia can be reached.
“You can expect the prime minister to host a second leaders’ meeting of the coalition of the willing, building on his Lancaster House summit,” Starmer’s spokesperson told reporters, referring to the London meeting on March 2.
So far only Britain and France have publicly committed to providing troops, but other countries are either expected to, or to offer other forms of support. Russia has shown no sign of agreeing to such a force, while President Donald Trump has far offered few assurances of providing a U.S. security guarantee.
Britain and France are involved in diplomatic and military talks to discuss what that force would look like, and what its responsibilities could be.
British defence minister John Healey and Britain’s Chief of the Defence Staff Tony Radakin are both expected in France this week for separate talks on Ukraine, while the foreign minister David Lammy will hold discussions with G7 colleagues in Canada.
Starmer’s spokesman disagreed with Trump’s claim over the weekend that Ukraine “may not survive” its war against Russia.
“We’ve always said that Ukraine, at the other end of this process, must emerge as a sovereign territory,” the spokesman said.
(Reporting by Andrew MacAskill and Elizabeth Piper; editing by William James and Michael Holden)
