Published by The Mail on Sunday (11th May, 2025)
Sir Keir Starmer joined the leaders of France, Germany and Poland in Kyiv yesterday in a bid to ramp up pressure on Russian president Vladimir Putin to accept a peace deal in Ukraine.
They issued an ultimatum to Putin: agree to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire by Monday – or face tough new sanctions and fresh supplies of arms being sent to Ukraine.
The four leaders travelled into the war-torn country by train to join President Volodymyr Zelensky in a highly symbolic mission intended to send a declaration of European resolve to both Russia and the United States.
“This is Europe stepping up,” said Starmer, standing alongside Zelenskyy, French president Emmanuel Macron, new German chancellor Friedrich Merz and Polish prime minister Donald Tusk at a press conference. “All of us are calling Putin out. If he’s serious about peace then he has a chance to show it now.”
On a dramatic day of diplomacy, the leaders held a virtual conference with the heads of about 25 other nations – including Canada, Italy and Japan – to show the scale of support from the ‘coalition of the willing’ for their peace proposal.
Then they called Donald Trump to update him on their proposal. The US president, who has been threatening to walk away from efforts to broker peace, said last week on social media that he wanted ‘ideally a 30-day unconditional ceasefire.’
The 20-minute call – made on French President Emmanuel Macron’s iphone as the leaders huddled on a sofa amid the gilded splendours of the Presidential Palace in Kyiv – was unplanned and described by Downing Street sources as ‘very warm.’
Afterwards Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, said on social media that ‘a comprehensive (air, land, sea, infrastructure) ceasefire for 30 days will start the process for ending the largest and longest war in Europe since World War II.’
But the plan met with hostile initial response from Russia. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, condemned the ‘confrontational’ statements and brushed aside threat of new sanctions, saying Ukraine’s allies could not isolate Moscow.
It is understood any new sanctions would be targeted at Russia’s financial system along with its oil and gas sector, crucial to funding Moscow’s military machine,
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of its Security Council, posted on X: “Macron, Merz, Starmer, and Tusk were supposed to discuss peace in Kyiv. Instead, they are blurting out threats against Russia. Shove these peace plans up your pangender arses.”
Sir Keir told a press conference in the palace grounds that this was a critical moment in the war. ‘Only one country started this illegal conflict, and that was Russia and Putin – and only one country stands in the way of resolving it peacefully, and that is Russia and Putin.’
Calling Ukraine ‘the beating heart of Europe,’ President Macron said it was an historic moment for the continent. “It’s a new era. It’s a Europe that sees itself as a power.”
The visit marked the first time the leaders of these four countries had travelled together to Ukraine, with the British, French and German leaders sharing the same train.
It coincided with the final day of a unilateral three-day ceasefire declared by Russia to mark its own VE Day events, which Kyiv has branded a ‘farce’ after claiming that it had been repeatedly violated along the 1,000-mile frontline by Kremlin forces.
The four visiting leaders placed candles beside a forest of Ukrainian flags planted in the city centre in memory of soldiers killed in the war.
Later Sir Keir, Mr Macron and Mr Zelensky walked together through the streets, passing Kyiv’s poignant Memorial Wall that shows hundreds of images of slain Ukrainian troops and an exhibit of destroyed Russian military equipment – a reminder of Putin’s failure to seize Ukraine’s capital.