LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Sunday he was ready to send British troops to Ukraine as part of any postwar peacekeeping force as he tried to show the US that European nations should have a role in the talks on ending the conflict.
\nStarmer said he had not taken the decision to consider putting British servicemen and women \u201cin harm\u2019s way\u201d lightly, but securing a lasting peace in Ukraine was essential to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from further aggression.
\nUS Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday said Ukraine and Europe would be part of any \u201creal negotiations\u201d to end Moscow\u2019s war, signalling that US talks with Russia this week were a chance to see how serious Putin is about peace.
\nThe end of Russia\u2019s war with Ukraine \u201cwhen it comes, cannot merely become a temporary pause before Putin attacks again,\u201d Starmer wrote in the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
\nStarmer\u2019s comments were the first time he has explicitly said he is considering deploying British peacekeepers to Ukraine. He has previously said that Britain was willing to help play a part in any peace deal that is negotiated.
\nIn the article, Starmer said he was prepared to contribute to security guarantees to Ukraine by \u201cputting our own troops on the ground if necessary.\u201d
\n\u201cI do not say that lightly,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI feel very deeply the responsibility that comes with potentially putting British servicemen and women in harm\u2019s way.\u201d
\nStarmer is expected to join German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and other European leaders in Paris on Monday after French President Emmanuel Macron convened talks on Ukraine.
\nUS President Donald Trump stunned European allies in NATO and Ukraine last week when he announced he had held a call with Putin without consulting them and would start a peace process. Trump\u2019s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, then suggested Ukraine and other European leaders would have no place at peace negotiations.
\nUS and Russian officials are expected to meet in Saudi Arabia in the coming days to start talks aimed at ending Russia\u2019s nearly three-year war in Ukraine.
\nStarmer is expected to travel to Washington soon and he suggested on Sunday that Britain could play a \u201cunique role\u201d in the negotiations to end the war, acting as a bridge between Europe and the US during the peace process in Ukraine.
\n\u201cEurope and America must continue to work closely together \u2013 and I believe the UK can play a unique role in helping to make this happen,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cWe are facing a once in a generation moment for the collective security of our continent. This is not only a question about the future of Ukraine. It is existential for Europe as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Sunday he was ready to send British troops to Ukraine as part of any postwar peacekeeping force as he tried to show the US that European nations should have a role in the talks on ending the conflict. Starmer said he had not taken the decision to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":71706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77166"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77181,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77166\/revisions\/77181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}