Hello and welcome to the details of UK PM Starmer: Putin will ‘have to come to the table’ on Ukraine ceasefire and now with the details
Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer during a press conference in the Downing Street Briefing Room after hosting virtual meeting with international leaders to discuss support for Ukraine. — AFP pic
LONDON, March 16 — UK premier Keir Starmer said Russian President Vladimir Putin would eventually have to “come to the table”, speaking after a virtual summit yesterday to drum up support for Ukraine.
The British leader told some 26 fellow leaders in a group call he hosted that they should focus on how to strengthen Ukraine, protect any ceasefire and keep up the pressure on Moscow.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky had, he said, “shown once again, and beyond any doubt, that Ukraine is the party of peace” by accepting a 30-day unconditional ceasefire.
“But Putin is trying to delay—saying there must be a painstaking study before a ceasefire can take place,” he added.
And he insisted: “Sooner or later, Putin will have to come to the table.”
Military chiefs will meet again on Thursday in the UK as the coalition moves into the operational phase, he added.
“The group that met this morning is a bigger group than we had two weeks ago, there is a stronger collective resolve and new commitments were put on the table this morning,” he said.
Diplomatic pressure on Russia
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia wanted to achieve a “stronger position” militarily ahead of any ceasefire, more than three years since it invaded his country.
“They want to improve their situation on the battlefield,” Zelensky told journalists in Kyiv.
The ceasefire proposal by Trump’s team comes as Russia has momentum in many areas of the front in Ukraine.
The Russian leader did not commit to an immediate ceasefire proposed by the US, instead setting conditions.
But Zelensky insisted that Putin was “lying about how a ceasefire is supposedly too complicated”.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday called for joint US and European pressure on Russia to accept the proposed ceasefire.
EU chief European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a message on X that Russia had to show “it is willing to support a ceasefire leading to a just and lasting peace”.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday he was “cautiously optimistic” about reaching a truce, but a lot more work needed to be done.
Overnight fighting continued, with Russia saying it had taken two more villages in its Kursk border region where it has launched an offensive to wrest back seized territory.
Moscow has pushed this week to retake a large part of the land that Ukraine originally captured in western Kursk.
Russia’s defence ministry said troops had taken control of the villages of Zaoleshenka and Rubanshchina—north and west of the town of Sudzha, the main town that Moscow reclaimed this week.
‘Stop the violence’
Kyiv said its air force had overnight downed 130 Iranian-made Russian-launched Shahed drones over 14 regions of the country.
Starmer and Macron have been leading efforts to assemble a so-called “coalition of the willing” ever since Trump opened direct negotiations with Moscow last month.
They say the group is necessary—along with US support—to provide Ukraine with security guarantees by deterring Putin from violating any ceasefire.
Starmer and Macron have said they are willing to put British and French troops on the ground in Ukraine but it is not clear if other countries are keen on doing the same.
Russia, earlier this week, again rejected the idea of foreign troops acting as peacekeepers in Ukraine.
But Macron said Saturday: “If Ukraine asks allied forces to be on its territory, it is not up to Russia to accept or not.”
Starmer has said he welcomes any offer of support for the coalition, raising the prospect that some countries could contribute logistics or surveillance.
But Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni reiterated after the call, which she joined, that Italy’s “participation in a possible military force on the ground is not envisaged”.
US President Donald Trump on Saturday appointed Keith Kellogg as special envoy to Ukraine.
A former national security advisor during Trump’s first term, Kellogg had previously been described as special envoy for both Ukraine and Russia.
But he was excluded from recent talks in Saudi Arabia on ending the war, with NBC News in the United States citing a senior Russian official who said that Putin considered him too pro-Ukraine. — AFP
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