The UK Prime Minister said he was working with the French and Ukrainian presidents to develop an alternative peace plan for Ukraine than the one being developed by President Donald Trump. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has discussed sending British troops to Ukraine to enforce any agreement.
According to Starmer, the heated Oval Office debate between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday left London and Paris rushing to develop an alternative strategy. “The UK and France are the most advanced in the thinking on this, and that’s why [French President Emmanuel] Macron and I are going to be working on this plan, which we’ll then discuss with the US.” He continued, “That is a step in the right direction. This is not an exclusion – the more the better in this. But we need to move to a quicker, more agile way of going forward, and I think that is a coalition of the willing states.”
The phrase “coalition of the willing” was often repeated by the George W. Bush administration to celebrate the countries willing to fight alongside the US in the disastrous Iraq War.
Recently, Starmer suggested London could send British troops to Ukraine to enforce any peace agreement. In a BBC interview on Sunday, the British leader said, “It means a line that is agreed in the terms of the deal, and then that that line is defended.” He added, “[Trump and I] discussed this at length on Thursday, because you can’t have a deal that then falls apart.”
Starmer has conditioned sending British troops to Ukraine on receiving American military support to ensure their safety.
On Sunday, London rolled out a $2.8 billion loan for Kiev that will allow Ukraine to buy $2 billion in British-made missiles. The loan is funded through frozen Russian assets. At a press conference he said, “We have to learn from the mistakes of the past.”
He continued, “We cannot accept a weak deal like Minsk, which Russia can break with ease. Instead, any deal must be backed with strength. Every nation must contribute to that in the best way that it can.”
Macron said that Europe needs to invest hundreds of billions in common European defense. “We will give a mandate to the European Commission to define our capacity needs for a common defense,” Macron said in an interview published in several French newspapers on Sunday. “This massive funding probably reaches hundreds of billions of euros.”
He added, “As there are doubts over the support of the Americans towards Europe over time, we need to mobilize hundreds of billions of euros. It is Europe’s strategic wake-up moment.”
Over the weekend, many European leaders published statements in support of Ukraine following Trump and Zelensky’s public argument.
