Sir Keir Starmer will warn President Donald Trump on Thursday that peace in Ukraine cannot be secured unless the US provides military cover for any European stabilisation force, in a high-stakes White House meeting.
The push by the British prime minister comes despite Trump telling his first cabinet meeting on Wednesday: “I’m not going to make security guarantees beyond very much.”
Trump added that: “We’re going to have Europe do that”, because “Europe is the next-door neighbour.”
Starmer will tell Trump in Washington that while Britain will play a key role in boosting Europe’s military capabilities, a US “backstop” was vital. “I don’t think there will be a deterrent to Putin if we don’t have one,” he said.
The meeting at the White House is part of a flurry of international diplomacy this week as European leaders begin trying to construct a new foundation for the continent’s security under pressure from Trump.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to meet Trump in Washington on Friday to sign a deal on critical minerals.
Starmer will then host European leaders on Sunday in the UK, including Zelenskyy, to thrash out how the continent can “step up” to its defence responsibilities, including talks about a European rearmament fund.
“I accept that European allies, the UK included, must do more and that means on capability, co-ordination and spend,” Starmer said.
British officials said the overriding aim of Starmer’s talks with Trump, which followed a visit to Washington by France’s President Emmanuel Macron earlier in the week, is to convince the US president to remain engaged in European security.
Trump and his aides have increasingly sided with Russia when describing the conflict in recent weeks. Some Western officials say this is a negotiating tactic aimed at bringing Moscow to the table.
After blindsiding European capitals with the launch of bilateral talks with Russia, Trump has in recent days blamed Zelenskyy for Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in 2022 and has called the Ukrainian leader a “dictator”.
The US also stunned and alarmed western allies at the UN earlier this week when it joined Russia and broke with European partners to pass a resolution at the security council that called for a swift end to the fighting but did not blame Russian aggression.
Still, European officials hope that the US will, as part of a Ukraine-Russia peace deal, provide support to European peacekeepers such as heavy lift capabilities, air defence and long-range missiles — hardware that can sit outside Ukraine but could be moved there quickly.
The UK and France have offered to put troops inside Ukraine to act as a deterrent to further Russian aggression, and want Trump to agree to provide a US backstop.
“My concern is if there is a ceasefire without a backstop. It will simply give Putin the opportunity to wait and to come again,” Starmer told reporters while en route to Washington. “His ambition in relation to Ukraine is pretty obvious, I think, for all to see.”
“We will play our part and I’ve been clear that we will need a US backstop of some sort.”
Starmer announced a £6bn annual increase in UK defence spending by 2027 this week, funded by aid cuts. He added that his decision to offer British troops for a post-truce force in Ukraine was “not taken lightly”.
Starmer’s commitment to increasing defence spending is part of an effort by the UK premier to woo President Trump at a crucial moment for the west.
The US president is expected to be offered a state visit to Britain — “he’s very fond of the Royal Family, as you know”, Starmer said — and the UK prime minister is repeatedly deploying Winston Churchill’s claim that the UK has a “special relationship” with the US.
“What I want to achieve is the going from strength-to-strength of the special relationship, particularly in a volatile world,” he said. Asked whether he trusted Trump, Starmer insisted: “Yes, I’ve got a good relationship with him.”
Starmer said: “When it comes to defence and security, we have for decades acted as a bridge because of the special relationship we have with the US and also our allegiance to our European allies.” He added: “That’s been there before Brexit. It survives Brexit.”
The relationship nevertheless is more fraught than at any time since the end of the cold war, with Starmer trying to stave off the threat of US tariffs as well as seeking to nudge Trump away from his pro-Russian rhetoric.
Trump has yet to sign off a deal agreed by Starmer to hand British sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius as part of an agreement to secure the long-term future of the US-UK military base at Diego Garcia.
David Lammy, UK foreign secretary, confirmed that the US had a veto. “If President Trump doesn’t like the deal, the deal will not go forward,” he told ITV’s Peston programme.
Starmer and Trump will have lunch on Thursday at the White House before holding a joint press conference — an event which British officials are viewing with some trepidation, given the US president’s freewheeling style.
Also on Thursday UK chancellor Rachel Reeves will hold talks with EU finance ministers at a G20 meeting in Cape Town on creating some kind of multilateral defence fund.
Aside from defence, Starmer will try to bolster economic ties between the UK and US in artificial intelligence and other high-tech areas such as space exploration.
Downing Street said: “The US and UK are the only two allied countries with trillion-dollar technology ecosystems, and the prime minister will make the case for further integration between the two countries’ tech sectors to make them the most efficient, ambitious technology sectors in the world.”
A YouGov survey of adults in Great Britain found that 23 per cent thought Starmer would do a good job in negotiating with Trump while 57 per cent said they thought he would do a bad job.
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