Chair’s Statement: Leaders Meeting on Ukraine, London, 2 March 2025
Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Statement as Chair for the Leaders Meeting on Ukraine in London on 2 March 2025.
Today, I hosted counterparts from across Europe including Türkiye, as well as the NATO Secretary General and the Presidents of the EU Commission, EU Council and Canada, in London to discuss our support for Ukraine.
Together, we reaffirmed our determination to work for a permanent peace in Ukraine, in partnership with the United States. Europe’s security is our responsibility above all. We will step up to this historic task and increase our investment in our own defence.
We must not repeat the mistakes of the past when weak deals allowed President Putin to invade again. We will work with President Trump to ensure a strong, just, and lasting peace that ensures Ukraine’s future sovereignty and security. Ukraine must be able to deter and defend itself against future Russian attack. There must be no talks on Ukraine without Ukraine. We have agreed that the UK, France and others will work with Ukraine on a plan to stop the fighting which we will discuss further with the US and take forward together.
Equally importantly, we discussed further rapid steps to enhance our support for Ukraine in pursuit of ‘peace through strength’. We will step up our military support, ensuring Ukraine has the support it needs to train its armed forces and accelerating our support in areas of greatest need. To help bring President Putin to the table, we will put further pressure on Russia by increasing sanctions, including on Russia’s energy revenues, while tightening enforcement of existing measures.
We also agreed that Ukraine must have robust security arrangements in place at the time of any future peace deal so that Russia does not invade again. We will accelerate plans to build up Ukraine’s own armed forces and border defences after any deal, and ensure that Ukraine can draw on munitions, finance and equipment to defend itself.
In addition, many of us expressed readiness to contribute to Ukraine’s security, including through a force consisting of European and other partners, and will intensify our planning.
We will continue to work closely together to drive forward next steps, and will take decisions in the coming weeks.