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Keir Starmer has warned that Vladimir Putin cannot be allowed to “play games” with the possibility of a ceasefire in Ukraine, as he prepared to present proposals for a peace deal to a coalition of about 25 world leaders.
The UK prime minister will host a meeting on Saturday of the “coalition of the willing”, a group of nations that have agreed to help keep the peace in Ukraine. He will seek to pile pressure on the Russian president to “finally come to the table” and “stop the barbaric attacks on Ukraine” after Kyiv agreed this week to an immediate 30-day ceasefire.
European nations, the EU Commission, Nato, Canada, Ukraine, Australia and New Zealand are expected to take part in the virtual meeting and provide updates on the aid they could provide towards enforcing a peace deal.
It came as Putin praised Donald Trump for “doing everything” to improve relations between Moscow and Washington, after Trump said the US has had “very good and productive discussions” with Putin in recent days.
Putin told a meeting of his security heads that improved relations with the US were now on the agenda. “We know that the new administration headed by President Trump is doing everything to restore at least something of what was basically destroyed by the previous US administration,” he said.
Putin also responded to an appeal by Trump to save the lives of “thousands” of surrounded Ukrainian soldiers, and said he would heed it as long as the soldiers surrendered. However, no evidence has emerged to back up Putin and Trump’s claims that there is a large-scale encirclement of Ukrainian troops, a claim explicitly denied by military officials in Kyiv.
The exchange of warm words between Trump and Putin is likely to cause further alarm in Kyiv and European capitals, already spooked by signs of the new US administration cosying up to Moscow while exerting pressure on Ukraine.
The remarks came after Steve Witkoff, Trump’s close ally and special envoy to the Middle East, held late-night talks with Putin on Thursday to discuss the US proposal for an immediate 30-day ceasefire in war on Ukraine.
Kyiv has already accepted the proposal, while Putin on Thursday set out a series of sweeping conditions that would need to be met before Russia would agree to the truce, which includes the condition that Ukraine should neither rearm nor mobilise during the 30-day truce.
On Friday night, in speech at the Department of Justice, Trump said the US had had “good calls” with Ukraine and Russia during the day. “I think we’ve had some very good results,” he said. “Just before I came here I got some pretty good news.”
He did not provide any details, but he later told reporters that he felt that “Russia is going to make a deal with us”.
Downing Street refused to set out precisely what goals the prime minister hoped to get from Saturday morning’s meeting, saying it was “a fast-moving situation” with a large number of countries involved.
UK officials had expected to be able to release the full list of attenders in advance, but were seemingly prevented from doing so by the complexity of organising such a large event at speed. There were reports that the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, might not attend the meeting due to worries about the Anglo-French plans to try to guarantee a long-term peace deal.
Starmer will be expected to set out to the assembled leaders details of a plan, spearheaded by him and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in the wake of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s disastrous White House meeting with Trump two weeks ago. Starmer and Macron spoke one-to-one on Friday evening in advance of the summit, Downing Street said.
In comments released by Downing Street before the summit, Starmer lambasted Putin over what he called “empty words and pointless conditions”.
“We can’t allow President Putin to play games with President Trump’s deal,” Starmer said. “The Kremlin’s complete disregard for President Trump’s ceasefire proposal only serves to demonstrate that Putin is not serious about peace.
“If Russia finally comes to the table, then we must be ready to monitor a ceasefire to ensure it is a serious, and enduring peace, if they don’t, then we need to strain every sinew to ramp up economic pressure on Russia to secure an end to this war.
“Putin is trying to delay, saying there must be a painstaking study before a ceasefire can take place, but the world needs to see action, not a study or empty words and pointless conditions.”
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Downing Street said the offers of help to enforce any peace deal had come from the 25 countries and covered “a spectrum of support”, ranging from troops on the ground to much more limited help, but was otherwise vague about Saturday’s agenda.
“It’s a fast-moving situation, and clearly many countries are involved, but we are very much welcoming tomorrow’s call as another sign of the progress being made and the unity between these countries to achieve a lasting peace,” a spokesperson said.
In a series of X posts on Friday night, Zelenskyy said Putin would “drag” everyone into “endless discussions … wasting days, weeks, and months on meaningless talks while his guns continue to kill people”.
“Putin cannot exit this war because that would leave him with nothing,” he said. “That is why he is now doing everything he can to sabotage diplomacy by setting extremely difficult and unacceptable conditions right from the start even before a ceasefire.”
Earlier on Friday, Trump said he had appealed to Putin to save the lives of “thousands of Ukrainian troops” supposedly surrounded by the Russian army. Putin first made the claim earlier in the week when he said Ukrainian troops had been surrounded during a retreat from Russia’s Kursk region, and had the choice to “surrender or die”.
Trump repeated Putin’s claim, writing that thousands of troops had been “completely surrounded” during the retreat. “I have strongly requested to President Putin that their lives be spared. This would be a horrible massacre, one not seen since World War II. God bless them all!!!” he wrote.
Putin told his security council that he had heard Trump’s appeal, and said the lives of Ukrainian troops would be spared if they surrendered. The Ukrainian military and independent analysts, however, denied there was an encirclement of troops.
“Reports of the alleged ‘encirclement’ of Ukrainian units by the enemy in the Kursk region are false and fabricated by the Russians for political manipulation and to exert pressure on Ukraine and its partners,” the general staff wrote in a statement published on its media channels. “There is no threat of encirclement of our units.”
Ukrainian security sources, independent military analysts and even pro-Russian Telegram channels disputed the encirclement claims by Putin and Trump.
Despite apparent optimism from the White House, US intelligence services have reportedly assessed that Putin remains committed to achieving “his maximalist goal of dominating Ukraine”.
The Washington Post reported on Friday the contents of an intelligence report circulated among Trump administration policymakers on 6 March, which stated that Putin remained determined to maintain control over Kyiv.
