Vladimir Putin will face “severe consequences” if he breaches a peace deal with Ukraine, Keir Starmer has warned as western military planners begin drawing up plans to enforce any agreement between the two countries.
The British prime minister issued his warning to the Russian president after meeting officials from 31 countries at the Northwood military base outside London, where they have started sketching out which western forces might be deployed to protect Ukraine in the future.
Starmer said Putin would not be allowed to veto how Kyiv decides to defend itself, after the Russian president demanded Ukraine’s demilitarisation as part of any peace deal. But the prime minister did not reiterate his promise to put boots on the ground, instead saying allied forces would be deployed to support Ukrainian troops, including by sea and air, rather than replacing them.
“The point of the security arrangements is to make it clear to Russia there will be severe consequences if they are to breach any deal,” he told reporters after the meeting.
“This is why it will require a US component; because it needs to be clear to Putin that there will be severe consequences if he breaches the lines. So the purpose of this plan is to ensure that we maintain the peace – as it is in Estonia and all the other countries in which we’re deployed.”
Asked whether British troops were ever likely to serve in Ukraine as he has previously suggested, Starmer said the military planners were discussing offering support by air, sea and land. But he added: “There is a strong sense that, because of what’s happened in the last three years, the Ukrainian forces are amongst the strongest now in Europe. They’ve got the capability, they’ve got the numbers, and they’ve actually got the frontline experience.
“We’re not talking about something that replaces the capability, we’re talking about something that reinforces that and then puts around it capabilities in relation to air, water and sea, and land.”
A Downing Street source said Starmer’s comments reflected “the nature of moving to the operational phase”.
The prime minister was speaking after meeting officers from 31 countries involved in planning how what he has referred to as the “coalition of the willing” might work in practice.
Countries represented included France, Poland, the Netherlands, Romania, Canada and Australia.
US and Italian officials also attended, even though the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has described Starmer’s plans as “risky and ineffective”, while the White House has refused to commit to supporting any western forces in Ukraine.
The talks took place against the backdrop of continuing negotiations between the US, Ukraine and Russia, with talks expected to resume in Saudi Arabia on Sunday. Officials from the three countries will discuss implementing a 30-day pause in targeting each other’s energy infrastructure while they work towards a more comprehensive deal.
“We don’t yet know whether there will be a deal,” Starmer said on Thursday. “The likelihood is there will be a ceasefire and then possibly a full deal after that. And therefore [we are planning for] two different scenarios.”
The pause in attacks on power plants was agreed after a marathon phone call between Putin and the US president, Donald Trump, earlier this week. A Kremlin account of that call said the Russian president had used it to insist Ukraine should demilitarise and the west should stop providing military aid.
Starmer rebuffed those demands on Thursday, saying: “Putin wants a defenceless Ukraine and I think that tells you everything about why we need to do this planning.
“What we’re clear about is that Ukraine needs to be secure and needs to be sovereign. And if you’re sovereign, that means that you decide for yourself what defence capability you have.”
He added: “You don’t let the person who’s invaded your country tell you what defence capability that you have. So I’m not surprised Putin is saying: ‘I would much rather Ukraine didn’t have any defence,’ because that’s exactly what happened before in Minsk [in 2014], and he breached the line, which I think doubly underlines my argument that we need security arrangements in place.
“It does mean that the planning here is on the basis that we continue to build up the Ukrainian forces.”
