Sir Keir Starmer has publicly snubbed Donald Trump in a new intervention over Ukraine, risking a row with the US president.
Mr Trump shocked the West this week when he announced he had spoken with Russia’s warmongering president Vladimir Putin and started talks to end the conflict in Ukraine.
The US commander-in-chief also announced that his plan to end the war might mean Ukraine loses territory to Russia. He added that Kyiv should not join the NATO alliance.
Sir Keir Starmer is risking a row with Donald Trump (Image: Getty)
“Long before President Putin they said there’s no way they’d allow that,” said Mr Trump. “They’ve been saying that for a long time that Ukraine can’t go into NATO. And I’m okay with that.”
However in a call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, Sir Keir openly defied Mr Trump’s argument.
The Prime Minister told Mr Zelensky that the UK remains committed ”to Ukraine being on an irreversible path to NATO”.
In a readout of the call, Downing Street said the Prime Minister began “by reiterating the UK’s concrete support for Ukraine, for as long as it’s needed” – adding: “He was unequivocal that there could be no talks about Ukraine, without Ukraine.”
The pair agreed to stay in close contact.
Donald Trump spoke with Vladimir Putin this week in a surprise phone call (Image: Getty)
Mr Trump’s comments about Ukraine and his phone call with Putin caught Europe off guard this week.
Germany’s foreign minister Annalena Baerbock admitted Mr Trump’s call with Putin was “very much out of the blue”.
Britain’s former defence secretary Ben Wallace blasted the US president’s statement as having “the stench of appeasement”, in a comparison to Neville Chamberlain’s treaty with Adolf Hitler in 1938 when he declared “peace for our time”.
As world leaders prepared to gather for the Munich Security Conference this weekend, Mr Wallace said: “This year’s gathering seems set to mirror the disastrous conference of 1938 where the continent stood blind in the face of Hitler’s duplicity. The stench of appeasement is once again returning to Munich.”
The warning was echoed by Tory former defence minister and ex-army captain Tobias Ellwood.
He said: “Once again, in this city, a peace deal is being stitched together by ceding terrain to an aggressor in the hope of avoiding a wider conflict.
“The strategy of ‘peace for our time’ as Chamberlain famously claimed in 1938, has no better chance of success today.”
Mr Trump plans to continue talks with Putin at a face-to-face meeting in Saudi Arabia. However, it provoked an immediate split with European leaders including Sir Keir, who insisted that Ukraine must be included in peace talks rather than having a deal imposed on it.
