Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer on Thursday said any eventual peace deal to end Russia’s three-year-old war against Ukraine must not end up providing any sort of windfall for Moscow as he met with President Donald Trump at the White House.
Speaking during a joint press conference alongside Trump in the East Room following a bilateral meeting between the two leaders, Starmer recalled the Anglo-American alliance that brought about victory in Europe to end the Second World War, and said he welcomed what he described as Trump’s “deep and personal commitment to bring peace and to stop the killing” in Ukraine.
“You've created a moment of tremendous opportunity to reach a historic peace deal, a deal that I think would be celebrated in Ukraine and around the world. That is the prize,” he said.
But Starmer warned that the U.S. and U.K. “have to get it right” when it comes to hammering out terms of any settlement, invoking the British call to “win the peace” after the hard-win victory over Hitler.
“That's what we must do now, because it can't be peace that rewards the aggressor or that gives encouragement to regimes like Iran,” he said, adding later that both he and Trump agree that history “must be on the side of the peacemaker, not the invader.”
Starmer also said he and Trump had talked about plans “to reach a peace that is tough and fair, that Ukraine will help shape, that's backed by strength,” that would have the effect of stopping Russian President Vladimir Putin from “coming back for more” Ukrainian territory in the future.
He told Trump that he’s working with other European nations and stressed that the U.K. “is ready to put boots on the ground and planes in the air to support a deal, working together with our allies, because that is the only way that peace will last.”
The prime minister’s readiness to put British troops in the ground and his description of Russia as an aggressor nation stood in stark contrast to the attitude expressed by Trump, who earlier in the day said during an Oval Office sit-down alongside Starmer that he trusts Putin to honor any eventual deal.
Trump also appeared to say his trust in the Russian leader stems from shared resentment over the 2017-2019 American law enforcement probe into Russia’s campaign to interfere in the 2016 presidential election on his behalf, an affair which he falsely refers to as “a hoax.”
“I've known him for a long time now ...we had to go through the Russian hoax together. That was not a good thing ... I don't believe he's going to violate his word. I don't think he'll be back when we make a deal. I think the deal is going to hold now. They're going to have security,” he said.
The meeting between Starmer and Trump is the American president’s second tete-a-tete with a foreign leader this week, but it is not the last.
Trump is set to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday as the Ukrainian leader visits Washington to ratify a deal that will give America access to much of Ukraine’s mineral wealth in exchange for as-yet unspecified continued assistance.
