British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he and President Donald Trump discussed achieving an agreement to end the war between Ukraine and Russia that would involve Kyiv and be backed by European peacekeeping forces.
Following meetings Thursday at the White House, Starmer said the plan would "reach a peace that is tough and fair, that Ukraine will help shape, that's backed by strength to stop [Russian President Vladimir] Putin coming back for more.”
Any agreement cannot lead to a peace "that rewards the aggressor," Starmer underscored, mirroring remarks that French President Emmanuel Macron delivered at his White House meeting with Trump on Monday that "the aggressor is Russia."
"We agreed history must be on the side of the peacemaker, not the invader," Starmer said, speaking alongside Trump during their joint news conference.
Starmer vowed to work closely with other European leaders and said the United Kingdom was ready to deploy peacekeeping troops together with its allies, "because that is the only way that peace will last."
Trump, however, was noncommittal on providing any security guarantees, including on a proposed U.S. "backstop" to support European peacekeepers to enforce a potential truce — a condition Starmer required.
"I don't like to talk about peacekeeping until we have a deal," Trump said during the news conference. "I like to get things done. I don't want to give it the bad luck sign."
Trump signaled that the U.S. backstop could be given in the form of the deal he is trying to secure with Kyiv that would allow American access to Ukraine's rare earth minerals and recoup funds given by former President Joe Biden's administration to support the country's war efforts.
"It's a backstop, you could say. I don't think anybody's going to play around if we're there with a lot of workers," the president told reporters at the Oval Office earlier Thursday.
During the news conference, Trump defended his decision to directly negotiate with Russia without the involvement of Kyiv or European allies as "common sense," saying, "If you want peace, you have to talk to both sides."
Trump said that talks with Moscow were "very well advanced" but cautioned that there was only a narrow window to secure a deal. He expressed confidence that Putin would "keep his word" and not launch further aggression on Ukraine should a peace agreement between Moscow and Kyiv be reached.
"I've known him for a long time now," he said. "We had to go through the Russian hoax together," he added, in an apparent reference to the U.S. government investigation that examined whether Trump's 2016 presidential campaign illegally coordinated with Russia to sway the outcome of the U.S. election.
Trump's outreach to Putin is a drastic reversal of Biden's policies, which sought to diplomatically and financially isolate Russia and insisted on "nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine," regarding peace negotiations.
Trump was asked whether he would apologize to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom he had called a "dictator." While not saying whether he would apologize, Trump said, “I have a lot of respect for him [Zelenskyy].”
Zelenskyy is set to visit the White House on Friday.
Ukraine peacekeeping
Differences remain among European allies on any future deployment of peacekeeping troops to Ukraine. The U.K. supports a French-led proposal, while other nations, including Poland, have ruled it out.
Putin rejects any suggestions of a peacekeeping troop deployment to Ukraine. He said Thursday that "Western elites" were trying to disrupt the newly established dialogue between Moscow and Washington.
Pushed to clarify Trump's position on sending peacekeepers, a senior administration official speaking on background to reporters Thursday said there were "concerns" about putting troops on the ground at a "post-Minsk I level of conflict, even post-Minsk II."
The official was referring to the 2014 and 2015 agreements aimed at ending fighting between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, neither of which was sustained.
The official said there would be less concern about sending troops if the conflict were "dialed down to a functional ceasefire," as the U.S. wants. The type of force deployed will depend on the political settlement to end the war, the official said — a "trade-off" that Trump and Starmer will focus on.
Starmer needs to reinforce that Europeans must be part of any peace discussions, said Gesine Weber, a fellow on the German Marshall Fund's Geostrategy team.
"It would be very odd to have a situation where you have the burden shift to Europeans, but not the strategic responsibility and the strategic reflections," she told VOA.
Unified front
It was a challenging visit for Starmer as he sought to balance the U.K.'s interests and those of its European allies while engaging with an unpredictable U.S. administration.
"The most important thing is: Do these guys get along? Do they have a common vision?" Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said about Trump and Starmer.
That, he told VOA, could signal the emergence of a Western strategy to end the war with NATO's support.
"If that's the case, then we're in a good position to try to promote a negotiation between Russia and Ukraine," O'Hanlon added.
Seeking to project a unified front with Trump, Starmer highlighted that the two sides would work together on an economic deal focused on artificial intelligence.
During the joint news conference and earlier in the Oval Office, Starmer underscored a state visit invitation by King Charles to Trump, the second such invitation following Trump's 2019 trip to London, as "historic" and "unprecedented."
He dismissed a reporter's question on whether the king expressed any concerns about Trump's plans to annex Canada, a British Commonwealth country.
"I think you're trying to find a divide between us that doesn't exist," he said.
Starmer is keen to secure favorable terms amid potential U.S. tariffs that could impact British exports as the U.S. hits European countries with 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum.
Trump told reporters that Starmer had "earned whatever they [the British government] pay him" in working to convince him against implementing punitive trade measures.
Boosting defense
Trump, who wants NATO members to boost defense spending to 5% of their gross domestic product, also reiterated his stance that Europe should "step up."
In 2023, the U.S. spent 3.4% of its GDP on defense, according to U.S. government data compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
In what appeared to be a move to satisfy Trump, Starmer announced on Tuesday an unexpected increase in the U.K. defense budget to 2.5% of the nation's GDP by 2027, then to 2.6% the following year.
The increase will be funded by cutting Britain's already depleted foreign aid budget to just 0.3% of the country's GDP. Starmer aims to further boost defense spending to 3% in the next Parliament, which will begin in 2029 at the latest after the next general election.
Kim Lewis contributed to this report.
