British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky was “a war leader,” who everyone should support.
“Russia is the aggressor. Zelensky is a war leader whose country has been invaded. And we should all be supporting him and not fawning over Putin,” Starmer said during a UK parliamentary debate.
He was responding to a question from Nigel Farage, the right-wing member of parliament who is a close ally of US President Donald Trump.
While Starmer stopped short of directly criticizing Trump for his treatment of Zelensky during the Ukrainian leader’s visit to the White House last Friday, he repeatedly warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin was not to be trusted.
“We know (Putin) is not a man to keep his word,” the prime minister said, adding that this was the reason why security guarantees would need to be part of any peace agreement.
“We must be vigilant on all fronts in relation to Putin,” he added.
What Ukraine is saying: Russia has used ceasefire deals in the past to “advance its war aims,” Ukraine’s first deputy prime minister warned Monday, accusing the Kremlin of a pattern of “deception, false promises, and escalation.”
“One of the more than 25 times Russia merely used ‘ceasefire’ as a means to advance its war aims, was on December 9, 2019, when Ukraine, France, Germany, and Russia met and agreed in Paris,” Yulia Svyrydenko posted on X. “Moscow signed the deal – only to break it immediately.”
Earlier today, Trump said the US “will not put up” with perceived resistance from Ukraine’s leader who said the end of the war is “very, very far away.”
