British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will join a summit of European leaders in Paris, convened by French President Emmanuel Macron.
This is reported by The Guardian, citing British officials.
The British Prime Minister is expected to later convey the messages from the meeting to US President Donald Trump, with whom he is also scheduled to meet in Washington next week.
"It is clear that Europe must take on a greater role in NATO. Britain will work to keep the US and Europe together. We cannot allow any divisions in our alliance to distract us from external threats," said Keir Starmer.
According to sources, the summit, scheduled for February 17, is also expected to be attended by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and the leaders of Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Poland.
At the meeting, politicians are likely to discuss US efforts to exclude European leaders from peace talks, the position Europe should take in the context of Ukraineʼs future membership in NATO, and what security guarantees can be offered to Ukraine, either through NATO or some European power.
Europeʼs participation in the settlement of the war in Ukraine
After the US President Donald Trump announced that during a phone call with Russian leader Vladimir Putin they agreed to immediately begin peace talks, the foreign ministers of Ukraine, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Poland, Germany and the European Union stressed in a statement that Ukraine and Europe must be part of any negotiations to end the Russian-Ukrainian war.
During the Munich Security Conference, Trumpʼs special envoy Keith Kellogg said that Europe would not be physically at the negotiating table between Russia and Ukraine, but its interests would be taken into account. He said that one of the reasons why previous peace talks failed was that too many countries were involved.
French President Emmanuel Macron has called an emergency summit of European leaders in Paris on Monday, February 17. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said he expects European leaders to discuss “very seriously” the challenges posed by US President Donald Trump. It has not yet been officially announced whether all EU leaders will attend the meeting.
The Axios publication, which revealed the details of the conversation between Zelensky and Trump, noted that the US president supported the idea of deploying European peacekeeping forces in Ukraine — this could become one of the security guarantees.
After that, the AP wrote that a group of European countries were privately working on a plan to send troops to Ukraine to help with post-war security.
The FT noted that the US has asked European countries to provide detailed proposals for the weapons, peacekeeping troops and security measures they could provide to Ukraine as part of any security guarantees. The United States wants to calculate Europeʼs willingness to protect Ukraine after a peaceful settlement, to determine the price Europe is willing to pay in exchange for participating in negotiations with Moscow.
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