British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, European leaders from France, Italy, Germany, and other nations, as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, spent the weekend in London crafting a European-led plan to bring peace to Ukraine. The 11th-hour diplomacy followed last Friday’s contentious press conference between Zelensky, US President Donald Trump, and Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office, which ended in a shouting match and the expulsion of the Ukrainian delegation from the White House.
What was agreed? In addition to a £2.2 billion loan announced on Saturday, Starmer pledged £1.6 billion in UK export finance on Sunday to allow Ukraine “to buy more than 5,000 air defense missiles, which will be made in Belfast, creating jobs in our brilliant defense sector.” Leaders also agreed to form a “coalition of the willing” to draw up a peace plan to take to Trump, as well as a multinational peacekeeping force, with troops from France, the UK, and other nations whom Starmer said would individually announce their participation. An economic deal between Ukraine and the US appears to be off the table for the moment.
Starmer said he discussed the agreement with Trump but gave no details of their conversation and insisted that he did not consider the US “an unreliable ally” despite Friday’s developments. The deal would also involve Russia, but Starmer emphasized that “we can’t approach this on the basis that Russia dictates the terms of any security guarantee before we’ve even got to a deal.”
What’s at stake for Europe? Everything. As Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer observed, it’s do-or-die time – literally. “The Europeans feel like there is a gun to their head from the East with the Russians as a direct national security threat, and now a gun to the head from the West, a country that does not support core values of collective security, of rule of law, and of territorial integrity. And that means that the Europeans have to now get their act together immediately – or else.”
