UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Sunday he was “ready and willing” to put UK troops on the ground in Ukraine, as part of any postwar peacekeeping force, to ensure the security of Britain and Europe. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, the UK Prime Minister said it was “essential to deter Putin from further aggression in the future”.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Sunday he was ready to send British troops to Ukraine as part of any postwar peacekeeping force as talks aimed at ending the conflict were set to begin this week.
Starmer said he had not taken the decision to consider putting British servicemen and women “in harm’s way” lightly, but securing a lasting peace in Ukraine was essential to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from further aggression.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday said Ukraine and Europe would be part of any “real negotiations” to end Moscow’s war, signaling that US talks with Russia this week were a chance to see how serious Putin is about peace.
The end of Russia’s war with Ukraine “when it comes, cannot merely become a temporary pause before Putin attacks again,” Starmer wrote in the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
Starmer is expected to join German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and other European leaders in Paris after French President Emmanuel Macron convened the talks on Ukraine.
US President Donald Trump stunned European allies in NATO and Ukraine last week when he announced he had held a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin without consulting with them and would start a peace process.
Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, then suggested Ukraine and other European leaders would have no place at peace negotiations.
On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which had started in 2014. The invasion, the largest and deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II, has caused hundreds of thousands of military casualties and tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilian casualties. As of 2025, Russian troops occupy about 20% of Ukraine. From a population of 41 million, about 8 million Ukrainians had been internally displaced and more than 8.2 million had fled the country by April 2023, creating Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II.
U.S. and Russian officials will meet in Saudi Arabia in the coming days to start talks aimed at ending Moscow’s nearly three-year war in Ukraine, a U.S. lawmaker and a source familiar with the planning said on Saturday but neither Ukraine nor any European country has been invited for the talks.
Conflicting US stand
But US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says both Ukraine and Europe should be involved in negotiations to end the war with Russia, after fears the US and Russia would engage in bilateral peace talks.
“If it’s real negotiations – and we’re not there yet – but if that were to happen, Ukraine will have to be involved, because they’re the one that were invaded,” Rubio told US broadcaster CBS.
“And the Europeans will have to be involved because they have sanctions on Putin and Russia as well and they’ve contributed to this effort,” Rubio said, cautioning that “we’re just not there yet.”
The US secretary of state is currently in Jerusalem, where he held a press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. From there, Rubio is traveling on to Saudi Arabia to meet with Russian representatives together with US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.
Rubio did not say in the interview who will be part of the Russian delegation and when exactly the meeting will take place.
Neither representatives of Ukraine nor the Europeans will be at the table during the talks in Saudi Arabia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had previously said on US television that he would not accept any peace solution in which Ukraine had not participated.
He also demanded security guarantees from the US. Without these, the chances of an economic pact with the US – which includes access to rare earths stored in Ukraine – would also shrink.
Rubio emphasized that the preliminary talks must now be followed by action. “The next few weeks and days will determine whether it’s serious or not.” A single phone call and even a single meeting will not be able to resolve the conflict.
(REUTERS)/ FRANCE24/DPA