Sir Keir Starmer will meet with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday alongside other EU leaders as Ukraine considers next steps after US peace talks. <\/p>\n
Mr Zelensky will meet Sir Keir in Downing Street along with French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Friedrich Merz. <\/p>\n
The meeting comes amid continued talks between Ukrainian and US officials on a Washington-backed plan to end the war. Ukraine\u2019s negotiators were in Florida for three days last week for talks with Donald Trump\u2019s envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner. <\/p>\n
On Sunday, cabinet minister Pat McFadden said that Ukraine\u2019s security and self-determination would be \u201cat the heart\u201d of the leaders\u2019 discussions in London. He said that talks were at a \u201creally pivotal moment\u201d.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Mr Trump\u2019s special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, who is due to step down in January, told a defence forum that a deal to end the Ukraine war was \u201creally close\u201d and that it now depended on resolving just two main outstanding issues. <\/p>\n
Keir Starmer with Volodymyr Zelensky in London in October (Getty)These are the future of Ukraine\u2019s Donbas region and the Zaporzhzhia nuclear power plant. He told Reagan National Defence Forum: \u201cIf we get those two issues settled, I think the rest of the things will work out fairly well. We\u2019re almost there.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, president Vladimir Putin\u2019s top foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov was quoted by Russian media as saying the US would have to make \u201cradical changes to their papers\u201d on Ukraine. He did not clarify what changes Moscow wanted Washington to make. <\/p>\n
Despite progress being made on peace talks, Russia continued to bombard Ukraine with drone attacks overnight into Sunday. <\/p>\n
Cabinet minister Pat McFadden said London talks come at \u2018pivotal moment\u2019 for Ukraine (PA)Missile and drone attacks killed at least three people in Ukraine, according to regional police. A man was killed in a drone attack on Ukraine\u2019s northern Chernihiv region on Saturday night, while a combined missile and drone attack on infrastructure in the central city of Kremenchuk caused power and water outages. <\/p>\n
Kremenchuk is home to one of Ukraine\u2019s biggest oil refineries and is an industrial hub. <\/p>\n
Two people were also killed and seven others injured in shelling by Russian troops in Ukraine\u2019s Kharkiv region, according to the regional police. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov welcomed the Trump administration’s new national security strategy.<\/p>\n
In comments published on Sunday by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, he said the strategy was “encouraging”.<\/p>\n
“There are statements there against confrontation and in favour of dialogue and building good relations,” he added.<\/p>\n
The document released on Friday by the White House makes it clear that the US wants to improve its relationship with Russia after years of Moscow being treated as a global pariah, and that ending the war is a core US interest to “re-establish strategic stability with Russia”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sir Keir Starmer will meet with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday alongside other EU leaders as Ukraine considers next steps after US peace talks. Mr Zelensky will meet Sir Keir in Downing Street along with French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Friedrich Merz. The meeting comes amid continued talks between Ukrainian and US […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n