 "British Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks during a welcome reception at the Britain's ambassador's residence in Washington, DC on Wednesday. AP")
A day after US President Donald Trump said he would not be providing “security guarantees to Ukraine beyond very much”, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who will meet Trump in Washington on Thursday, said that he will urge the US president to provide a US “backstop” to prevent Russian President Vladimir Putin from launching a fresh assault on Ukraine after any peace deal.
According to an Independent report, Starmer, who is prepared to commit British troops to a peacekeeping mission in Ukraine, believes that US promises are vital to “deter Putin from coming again”.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is also set to visit Washington on Friday to sign a deal concerning rare earth minerals. However, he cautioned that security guarantees still need to be established as part of the broader economic agreement.
On Wednesday, Trump said that he would not be providing “security guarantees to Ukraine beyond very much,” indicating that European nations should assume that responsibility due to their geographical closeness.
“I’m not going to make security guarantees beyond very much. We’re going to have Europe do that, because it’s in, you know — we’re talking about, Europe is their next-door neighbour, but we’re going to make sure everything goes well,” CNN quoted Trump as saying at his first Cabinet meeting.
“And as you know, we’ll be making a — we’ll be really partnering with Ukraine, in terms of rare earth. We very much need rare earth. They have great rare earth,” Trump added.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsTrump said that his Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright would be “working on that together.”
“The deal we’re making gets us, it brings us great wealth. We get back the money that we spent, and we hope that we’re going to be able to settle this up,” Trump was quoted as saying.
Talking about ending the Ukraine war, Trump said that Russian President Vladimir Putin “is going to have to” make concessions in the negotiations.
“Yeah, he will,” CNN quoted Trump as saying when asked whether Putin will make concessions.
“He’s going to have to. And I think, I believe that, because we got elected, that war will come to an end. And I also believe if we didn’t get elected, if this administration didn’t win the election by a lot, that war would go on for a long time, and he would want to take the whole thing,” said Trump.
Asked what concessions the Russian leader would have to make, Trump said, “I don’t want to tell you right now."
Russia earlier contradicted Trump by saying it strongly opposed European peacekeeping forces in Ukraine, with foreign minister Sergei Lavrov claiming that it was a “deceit aimed at fuelling the conflict”.
With inputs from agencies