The News
US President Donald Trump expressed confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin wouldn’t violate a potential peace deal in Ukraine. “He’ll keep his word,” Trump said at the start of his meeting with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday.
The British premier is in Washington with “a promise and a plea,” The New York Times wrote: Starmer is pledging to increase UK’s defense spending and to send peacekeeping troops to post-war Ukraine, while urging Trump not to abandon Kyiv in favor of Moscow’s demands.
At a press conference, Trump called his UK counterpart a “very tough negotiator.”
SIGNALS
Starmer could have more luck deescalating tensions than Macron
Unlike French leader Emmanuel Macron’s Washington visit, Starmer will present Trump with the “gift” of a pledge to increase the UK’s military spending, as the UK prime minister seeks to assuage Trump’s complaints of European countries being freeloaders, The New York Times wrote. France or Germany would be hard-pressed to offer up such defense commitments this quickly, the Times argued, so Starmer’s tack to maintain the “special relationship” between the US and UK could in fact hold: A senior administration official said the US was “very pleased” about the UK’s increased defense spending, the Daily Mail reported.
UK army casts doubt on Starmer’s peacekeeping plan?
Former UK army officials cast doubt on the country’s capability to lead a peacekeeping mission to Ukraine with France: A rotating force of 10,000 UK troops would require about 40,000 soldiers in all, “and we just haven’t got that number available,” the former UK army head told the BBC. Starmer is set to present Trump with a plan to send 30,000 European troops to Ukraine, but is holding out for US air support, The Telegraph reported. However, it remains unclear if other European countries support the plan, before a ceasefire is even close. Still, such an offer could strengthen “Europeans in their dealings with the US,” an expert at the Royal United Services Institute argued, helping secure a place at the negotiation table.