“If there is a cease-fire without a backstop, it will simply give him the opportunity to wait and to come again,” Keir Starmer warned on the flight to Washington, D.C.
Without sufficient U.S. cover, Starmer suggested, the Russian president could attack Ukraine again and the situation could spiral into a wider war.
Starmer told journalists on the plane: “The reason I say the backstop is so important is that the security guarantee has to be sufficient to deter Putin from coming again.
“Because my concern is if there is a cease-fire without a backstop, it will simply give him the opportunity to wait and to come again because his ambition in relation to Ukraine is pretty obvious, I think, for all to see."
U.K. officials were tight-lipped on Wednesday as to what security guarantees Starmer will be asking of Trump.
In a sense, the U.S. troops and military assets stationed in Europe already represent a de facto backstop — the question is whether Starmer and Zelenskyy can persuade Trump to provide more.
“It’s got to be a lasting peace, and that requires us to put in place an effective security guarantee,” Starmer said, while admitting: “Exactly what the configuration of that is, exactly what the backstop is, is obviously the subject of intense discussion.”
Starmer suggested he could back joint EU-U.K. defense funding arrangements, which are being discussed by G20 finance ministers in South Africa.
“I accept that European allies, the U.K. included, must do more, and that means on capability, coordination and spend,” he said. “And the coordination bit shouldn't be overlooked. I was very struck by the lessons we have to learn from Ukraine about the way in which warfare has been conducted, and about the need for us to coordinate better in terms of the capability we’ve all got on the table in relation to supporting Ukraine.”
Despite the gulf between the U.S. and European allies, Starmer — who announced a surprise boost to U.K. defense spending at the expense of foreign aid on Tuesday — did his best to butter up the U.S. president in advance of the visit.
Senior aides travelled to Washington in the week before Starmer’s visit to help prepare the ground. Starmer is joined on the trip by his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, who held talks with his White House counterpart Susie Wiles in Florida in December.
Starmer is also joined on the visit by his national security adviser Jonathan Powell, who has been pressing the U.S. to approve a deal to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands — a British-controlled, militarily strategic archipelago in the Indian Ocean — to Mauritius.
Starmer said he could trust Trump, who is “clearly committed to NATO.” He told journalists that “of course” the president — who has branded Zelenskyy a "dictator" — knows that Putin is the aggressor in Ukraine, and “there's no issue between us on this.”