Starmer’s diplomatic flurry puts him at centre of attempts to shape Ukraine-Russia deal | Ukraine

As Keir Starmer and his aides huddled to discuss their response to Friday’s calamitous White House meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the prime minister’s team pondered whether to issue a statement on social media.

Already messages of support were flooding in for the Ukrainian president from other European leaders, including Emmanuel Macron of France and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen.

But the prime minister decided to stay silent and instead display his backing with action rather than words. After a series of phone calls on Friday night, Starmer brought forward a planned visit by Zelenskyy to London, giving him the opportunity for a symbolic meeting at Downing Street followed by an audience with King Charles.

“I picked up the phone to President Trump, and I picked up the phone to President Zelensky,” Starmer told the BBC on Sunday. “That was my response.”

Starmer’s flurry of diplomatic activity has resulted in a Franco-British peace effort which puts the prime minister at the centre of European attempts to shape any deal between Moscow and Kyiv.

“Starmer’s was a big gesture,” said Bronwen Maddox, the director of the Chatham House thinktank. “Having Zelenskyy here, having that meeting, mattered. There is no need to go rushing around tweeting. He’s now trying to be a bridge between the US and Zelenskyy and Europe, which is a reasonable ambition.”

Some even believe this could be Starmer’s “Falklands moment”, referring to the way Margaret Thatcher took on Argentina over the Falkland Islands and in doing so rebooted her flagging premiership. By Sunday morning, Starmer was being backed by the leaders of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.

“It’s really important that this summit the prime minister is having today goes well and we support him in that,” the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, said on Sunday.

Starmer’s calls with Trump and Zelenskyy on Friday night focused on trying to get the minerals deal between the two countries back on track.

One Downing Street official said: “We need to ensure there is a minerals agreement and there is a plan for stopping the fighting and giving Ukraine the security guarantees it needs. The minerals deal is still on the table.”

Officials rejected reports that Starmer’s call with Zelenskyy had been “emotional”, but said the Ukrainian president had clearly found his encounter with Trump “bruising”. The two men agreed that Zelenskyy would visit London 24 hours earlier than planned, allowing him time for a longer meeting in Downing Street before a trip to Sandringham on Sunday to meet King Charles.

Officials said the visit to see the king was a deliberate message to Washington, where Trump is eagerly awaiting his own audience with the monarch, with US officials pushing for a state visit as soon as this year.

Starmer then spent Saturday around the cabinet table in discussions with Jonathan Powell, his national security adviser, and other senior officials. They had come to the conclusion there was little they could do to restart US-Ukrainian talks, so decided to come up with an alternative plan to help shape the peace deal.

The plan they hit upon was a separate set of discussions, this time involving Britain, France, Ukraine and potentially one or two others, to formulate their own prospective deal to present to the US. The talks would provide a counterbalance to those between the US and Russia which have excluded Ukraine and European countries.

Starmer called Macron, who welcomed the idea. But there was one more hurdle to clear: the prime minister had to call the US president for the second time in two days to make sure he was not opposed.

Officials briefed on the call would not say what Trump’s reaction to the idea was, or even whether he indicated he would not stand in the way. But the prime minister was sufficiently emboldened by the conversation that he decided to announce the talks on the BBC on Sunday morning.

“The second Trump call was much more focused on not wanting to go back over what has happened, but saying, if we move forward with this other plan, would you be interested in us doing that?” said one British official. “There is no point in us doing this if the US didn’t feel there was space for that. Clearly we are doing it, so we thought it was a worthwhile exercise.”

Saturday evening culminated with Starmer’s Downing Street talks with Zelenskyy. In front of the assembled press, the prime minister took the unusual step of leaving No 10 to greet Zelenskyy from his car, before walking him back down the street again after their meeting.

“And as you heard from the cheers on the street outside, you have full backing across the United Kingdom,” Starmer told his Ukrainian counterpart. “We stand with you, with Ukraine, for as long as it may take.”

Sunday was yet another intense day of diplomacy for the prime minister, who began by speaking to the leaders of all three Baltic states and then hosted the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, at Downing Street. Meloni, who arguably has the best relations with Trump of any European leader, has called for an immediate summit between the US, EU and other allied countries to discuss Ukraine.

From there, Starmer travelled to Lancaster House for his defence summit, which was attended by representatives from across Europe, as well as officials from Turkey and Nato.

British officials are aware that all this activity may result in very little. They have yet to secure their main objective – a promise from Trump to offer military backing to any British and European troops posted to secure a new border between Russia and Ukraine.

But for now, Downing Street is delighted that the prime minister has managed to navigate the turbulent geopolitics of a Trump-led US, and in doing so prove that post-Brexit Britain can still play a global leadership role.

“It’s a testament to the relationship the prime minister has with the presidents of both America and Ukraine that he was able to host Zelenskyy and speak to Trump not once but twice over the days,” said one official.

Additional reporting by Angela Giuffrida in Rome