UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said that he is “ready and willing” to provide on ground support of British troops to Ukraine as part of any postwar peacekeeping force amid a scheduled peace talks regarding Ukraine war which will be led by the United States. Starmer noted that securing a lasting peace in Ukraine is significant in order to deter the Russian President Vladimir Putin’s future plans of aggression in Kyiv as he stated that his decision was not to put British servicemen and women "in harm's way". Starmer wrote in a piece in The Daily Telegraph that “the Russia-Ukraine war, when it comes, cannot merely become a temporary pause before Putin attacks again." The apprehension has been growing whether Ukraine and European leaders will be part of the Russia-US peace talks scheduled to be held this week in Saudi Arabia. However, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday that both Ukraine and Europe will be a party to any "real negotiations" involving the Russia-Ukraine war, signalling that the US would be testing the waters with a peace talk with Russia whether the latter is interested in it at all or not. A BBC report on Sunday quoted a senior Ukrainian government source who claimed that Kyiv has not been invited to the US-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia. Rubio, in an interview to CBC News said, “President Trump spoke to Vladimir Putin last week, and in it, Vladimir Putin expressed his interest in peace, and the president expressed his desire to see an end to this conflict in a way that was enduring and that protected Ukrainian sovereignty.” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier made it clear that he would reject any negotiations done without Kyiv as a party to the talks.
