UK and US leaders meet with Ukraine and EU partners to discuss peace plan

Saturday 09 August 2025 - 16:30

The UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, and the US vice president, JD Vance, are hosting Ukrainian and European representatives at Chevening, Kent, to advance discussions on a US-brokered peace plan for Ukraine. The meeting, requested by Washington, comes just days before a scheduled encounter between US president Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin in Alaska.

Tensions have risen after Trump suggested that ending the war might require “some swapping of territories,” a statement that drew sharp criticism from Kyiv. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy firmly reiterated that “Ukrainians will not give their land to occupiers” and warned that any agreements made without Ukraine’s direct involvement would be “decisions against peace.”

British prime minister Keir Starmer, in a phone call with Zelenskyy earlier in the day, reaffirmed the UK’s unwavering support for Ukraine and stressed the need to maintain pressure on Moscow. European leaders, including Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk, have raised concerns that the conflict could be frozen rather than resolved.

If the Trump-Putin summit proceeds, it would mark the first meeting between a US president and the Russian leader since the full-scale invasion in 2022, and the first US-Russia presidential encounter since Putin met Joe Biden in Geneva in 2021.