Starmer hosts 26 leaders in group call: Putin will have to come to table, says UK PM

LONDON: UK premier Keir Starmer said the “ball was in Russia’s court” and that President Vladimir Putin would “sooner or later” have to “come to the table,” after a virtual summit on Saturday to drum up support for a coalition willing to protect any eventual ceasefire in Ukraine.

The British leader told some 26 fellow leaders as they joined the group call hosted by Downing Street that they should focus on how to strengthen Ukraine, protect any ceasefire and keep up the pressure on Moscow.

While Ukraine had shown it was the “party of peace” by agreeing to a 30-day unconditional ceasefire, “Putin is the one trying to delay,” he said. “If Putin is serious about peace, I think it’s very simple, he has to stop his barbaric attacks on Ukraine and agree to a ceasefire, and the world is watching,” he added.

Military chiefs will now meet again on Thursday in the UK as the coalition moves into “the operational phase,” Starmer said after the talks. “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 added.

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 a Kyiv press conference. 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 listing a string of demands. But Zelensky said that Putin is “lying about how a ceasefire is supposedly too complicated.”

EU chief European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a message on X that Russia has to show “it is willing to support a ceasefire leading to a just and lasting peace”. And Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof also said on X it was “now important to continue to exert pressure on Russia to come to the negotiating table.”

Overnight fighting continued in the relentless three-year war, 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. As moves have gathered pace for a ceasefire, Moscow has pushed this week to retake a large part of the land that Ukraine originally captured in western Kursk. But Zelensky denied any “encirclement” of his troops in the Kursk region.

“Our troops continue to hold back Russian and North Korean groupings in the Kursk region,” he said on social media. The Russian defence ministry said troops took control over the villages of Zaoleshenka and Rubanshchina -- north and west of the town of Sudzha, the main town that Moscow reclaimed this week.

Kyiv meanwhile said its air force had overnight downed 130 Iranian-made Russian-launched Shahed drones over 14 regions of the country.

“The Kremlin’s complete disregard for President Trump’s ceasefire proposal only serves to demonstrate that Putin is not serious about peace,” Starmer said late Friday.

Starmer and French President Emmanuel 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.