Moscow ‘won’t accept Nato peacekeepers’

In an interview with French regional newspapers, Macron said he himself was ready to speak to Putin “when it is appropriate in the cycle of upcoming negotiations”.

The former defence minister Ben Wallace said Trump’s “opening gambit” on talks with Russia “looked like appeasement” by “taking everything off the table before the negotiations had started”.

“He said ‘we won’t put American boots on the ground, we won’t give a security guarantee’,” Wallace told Sky News. He added that Moscow did not want peacekeepers in Ukraine “because Putin will be back for more”.

“Russia is up to its old tricks, telling Ukraine what it can and can’t do with its own territory,” Wallace continued.

President Macron confirmed he would host a new meeting on Ukraine after the talks in Saudi Arabia.

He said President Trump “can restart a useful dialogue” with President Putin in an interview with French regional newspapers.

Macron said Paris was not “preparing to send ground troops, which are belligerent to the conflict, to the front” in Ukraine but was considering, with its ally Britain, sending “experts or even troops in limited terms, outside any conflict zone”.

He said the new talks would take place on Wednesday “with several European and non-European states”, after an emergency meeting on Monday in Paris which brought together a small number of key European countries.

The US secretary of state Marco Rubio briefed key European ministers on Tuesday on his talks in Riyadh with Russian officials, the French foreign ministry said.

Rubio spoke with foreign ministers from Britain, France, Germany and Italy, the ministry said, without giving details of the discussions.

The French foreign minister also said Rubio had included Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, in his debrief.

It comes amid concerns European leaders have been sidelined from talks with Russia.

The former chief of the British Army says the UK’s armed forces are not big enough to contribute to a peacekeeping force in Ukraine after the war.

“The army’s total strength is about 72,000, but the deployable numbers are near 45-50,000 if that,” General Sir David Richards told Sky News.

“The force people are talking about would need all these people on an enduring basis. And the army’s just not big enough to do it to any great effect.”

Canada’s foreign minister said Kyiv needs “robust” security guarantees as part of any future peace agreement to stop President Putin from invading Ukraine again.

“We know very well that President Putin has no red lines and that after Ukraine, it can certainly be an attack against Nato territory,” Mélanie Joly said.

Joly added that Canada, the US and Europe must offer security guarantees to Ukraine.

“We wouldn’t want to be in a situation where essentially there’s a ceasefire, there’s a non-durable peace, and Russian forces leave Ukrainian territory, reorganise themselves and re-invade Ukraine,” she said. “We would find ourselves in an even more dangerous situation than today.”

Sir Peter Westmacott, former UK ambassador to the US from 2012-16, has told Times Radio that a leaked US plan proposing that Ukraine compensate Washington for the aid it has provided Kyiv with the country’s critical minerals, oil and gas and ports and infrastructure was “frankly unreasonable”.

“Donald Trump is a president who is transactional. He likes to do deals. He doesn’t like to give stuff for nothing. And he will want to see everybody else putting their shoulder to the wheel. Some of the stuff that he’s been saying… [including], ‘we want $500 billion from Ukraine in exchange for the support America has already given’ is frankly unreasonable.

“The numbers don’t add up. And it’s just non-negotiable.”

The US is planning to appoint a new set of special envoys for bilateral talks with Moscow, according to a Russian presidential aide.

Yuri Ushakov said the two new envoys would work alongside Keith Kellogg and help maintain a direct channel of communication with Moscow.

“They [the US] have already appointed an envoy, a special envoy for Ukraine, Mr Kellogg, but he will lead contacts with Ukrainians and Europeans. For our Russian-American track, a special person or a group of special representatives will be allocated,” Ushakov said after meeting US officials in Saudi Arabia.

Earlier in the day the US secretary of state Marco Rubio said the US and Russia would both move “quickly” to re-establish each other’s diplomatic missions.

China’s foreign minister Wang Yi told the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday that Beijing “supports all efforts conducive to peace talks” regarding Ukraine.

He said Beijing would continue to follow the “four points” outlined by President Xi on what should be done.

The points, put forward by Xi in April last year, include refraining from seeking selfish gains, not adding fuel to the fire, creating conditions for the restoration of peace and reducing a negative impact on the world economy, refraining from undermining the stability of global industrial and supply chains.

France is reportedly planning to host a second meeting to discuss European security and Russia’s war with Ukraine on Wednesday.

This next instalment is expected to include leaders of countries who were not invited to Monday’s meeting in Paris, two diplomatic sources have told Reuters, including Norway, Canada, the three Baltic states, the Czech Republic, Greece, Finland, Romania, Sweden and Belgium.

Some countries could participate by video conference, according to the news agency.

The Élysée Palace has not yet commented on the report.

President Zelensky has postponed a planned trip to Riyadh in order not to give “legitimacy” to the meeting between US and Russian officials that took place today in the Saudi capital, according to Reuters.

Speaking from Turkey earlier today, the Ukrainian president said he did not want there to be “any coincidences”.

His trip to Saudi Arabia, originally planned for Wednesday, has been postponed until March 10.

by Oliver Wright

Starmer will travel to Washington next week to meet Trump and as such will be the de facto spokesman for European interests in Washington.

As Kim Darroch, the former British ambassador to Washington put it: “It is quite striking in this post-Brexit age that he [Starmer] has become de facto one of the leading figures in Europe on this issue, despite having left the EU.”

Of course none of this means that Starmer’s broader Brexit reset will be easy. But the irony is that Trump, the great Brexit supporter, may have done more to bring Britain and Europe together than Starmer could possibly have achieved on his own.

by Oliver Wright

Yesterday’s emergency meeting of European leaders to discuss Ukraine and the crisis in transatlantic security relations was particularly notable.

It was organised by the French, with a large number of smaller EU countries excluded to make it more manageable. In contrast Britain, outside the EU, was central.

The reason is twofold. Britain is still one of the largest, most able and willing military powers on the continent and there is now an acknowledgement that if Europe is going to have to do more to provide its own defence, it cannot be done without the UK. London is more important than Brussels in this regard.

Also — and partly because of Brexit — EU leaders acknowledge that Starmer is in a better position than they are to plead the continent’s case to the new administration.

The conclusion of talks in Riyadh was swiftly followed by the blaring of sirens in Kyiv and across Ukraine, sending millions to shelters with warnings that a barrage of Russian ballistic missiles was on the way.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to President Zelensky, said the assault represented the reality of Moscow’s “negotiating position” better than anything discussed in Riyadh. He was similarly damning towards the Americans, accusing them of “encouragement rather than coercion, a voluntary and bizarre renunciation of strength in favour of disheartening and unmotivated appeasement of the aggressor”.

“The killing of civilians and the escalation of war serve as Russia’s supposed evidence of its right to exist outside international law — as a permanent, irrational Damocles’ sword hanging over Europe,” he posted. “And for what outcome? To achieve a ‘fake peace’ that doesn’t exist even in theory and an inevitable continuation of the war, carried out by an increasingly brazen Russia?”

The Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov said that Moscow and Washington had yet to appoint their special envoys for US-Russia talks on resolving the conflict in Ukraine, Russian state agencies reported.

Ushakov said that on the American side, the retired general Keith Kellogg would deal with Ukraine and Europe but someone else would handle contacts with Russia.

“They have already appointed an envoy, a special envoy for Ukraine, Mr Kellogg, but he will lead contacts with Ukrainians and Europeans. For our Russian-American track, a special person or a group of special representatives will be allocated,” Ushakov said.

He said Russia would be informed about the American appointments, then President Putin would designate the Russian representatives who would take part in the bilateral contacts.

The Danish prime minister has warned that the security situation in Europe is “worse than the Cold War”.

Mette Frederiksen was speaking in the country’s parliament as she called for a radical ramp-up of Danish defence spending. US officials have told European states to do more when it comes to defence spending. Denmark spends about 2 per cent of GDP on defence.

“We are in a far more difficult … and more dangerous security situation than we have been in my lifetime,” she told MPs. “This is worse than the Cold War.”

When he announced he had cancelled tomorrow’s trip to Saudi Arabia, Ukraine’s President Zelensky said that he wanted nothing decided “behind our backs”.

“We want no one to decide anything behind our backs … No decision can be made without Ukraine on how to end the war in Ukraine,” Zelensky told reporters during a visit to Turkey, where he had been holding talks with President Erdogan.

The United States has no intention of lowering its troop numbers in eastern Europe, President Duda of Poland said after a meeting in Warsaw with the President Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg.

There are more than 63,000 US troops throughout Europe — the largest number, more than 35,000 according to Statista, are stationed in Germany.

President Erdogan said Turkey would be the “ideal host” for any talks on ending the nearly three-year conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

His offer followed nearly three hours of talks with President Zelensky of Ukraine, who is seeking to shore up Kyiv’s position after President Trump’s outreach towards Moscow.

“Turkey will be an ideal host for the possible talks between Russia, Ukraine and America in the near future,” Erdogan told a joint news conference in Ankara with Zelensky.

Referring to the new “diplomatic initiative started by Trump to end the war swiftly through negotiations”, Erdogan said previous talks in Istanbul between the sides in 2022 had been “an important reference point and the platform where the parties came closest to an agreement”.

The Czech Republic and Slovakia have dismissed parallels between the 1938 Munich agreement and US-Russia talks on Ukraine.

Western European governments fear they, and Ukraine itself, are being sidelined over the war in Ukraine, just as Czechoslovakia was almost 90 years ago. The pre-Second World War deal between European leaders and Nazi Germany handed swathes of Czechoslovakia to Adolf Hitler. It has been seen as a model of appeasement and a move that emboldened Hitler on the path to war.

Several European leaders at a security conference in Munich last week drew parallels between the 1938 deal and Europe’s current position.

“We reject any comparison to Munich 1938,” the Slovak foreign minister Juraj Blanar said after meeting his Czech counterpart Jan Lipavsky.

“It’s completely different today. Ukraine — the subject of the decision-making — will be at the table and has to be. We can’t do it without Ukraine,” Blanar added.

Moscow is unable to agree to a proposed ban on attacking Ukrainian energy infrastructure because it has never done so, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said after US-Russia talks in Riyadh.

“Our American colleagues said that maybe we should somehow introduce some kind of moratorium on attacks on energy facilities. We explained that we have never endangered the [Ukrainian] population’s energy supply systems, and our targets were only those facilities that directly serve the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” he said.

Russia’s defence ministry has made regular comments about strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure. Attacks on power stations and other energy facilities have led to blackouts across Ukraine.

Ukraine’s President Zelensky has announced that his proposed trip to Saudi Arabia has been postponed until March 10. He was originally due to visit Riyadh on Wednesday after being in the UAE on Monday and Turkey today.

The talks in Riyadh have now ended, according to Russian and American officials. They lasted four and a half hours.

President Zelensky has slammed US-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia about the war in Ukraine, accusing American and Russian negotiators of seeking to decide his country’s future without its involvement.

He said discussions were “taking place between representatives of Russia and representatives of the United States of America. About Ukraine — about Ukraine again — and without Ukraine”.

Zelensky said last week that Kyiv would not accept the result of any peace deal that was reached without Ukraine’s involvement.

The United States has started to better understand Russia following Tuesday’s talks in Saudi Arabia, Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, has said.

“The conversation was very useful. We not only heard, but also listened to each other. I have reason to believe that the American side has begun to better understand our position,” he said.

Russia will not accept the deployment of troops from Nato countries to Ukraine as part of any peace deal, Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, has said following US-Russia talks in Riyadh.

“The appearance of troops from Nato countries … under a foreign flag, the flag of the European Union or the national flag, is unacceptable,” he said.

He also said that Russia welcomed President Trump’s comments that inviting Kyiv to join Nato had caused the war in Ukraine.

Britain and Sweden, both Nato members, have said they would consider putting troops on the ground in Ukraine in the event of a peace deal.

There is a “huge danger” that the way the war in Ukraine is settled becomes the “prelude to a wider war”, William Hague has warned.

The former Tory party leader and foreign secretary told Times Radio: “There’s a great danger … we see it all through history, that the way in which you settle one war can, if you’re not careful, lead to a bigger war later, because it leaves both sides with an incentive to go back to fighting: you know, a humiliated side that needs to recover its dignity and territory, and … a victorious side that thinks it can come back [for more].”

He added: “And so there’s a huge danger of this here, that this is the prelude to a wider war in later years. And Trump and his team are not really showing the awareness of that. So that’s the biggest worry in this whole thing.”

The Americans said that all sides would need to make concessions in order to bring about an end to the three-year-old Ukraine war.

“Today is the first step of a long and difficult journey but an important one,” Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, said after the talks between the US and Russia in Riyadh.

The US delegation said negotiations would include discussions about territory and security guarantees for Ukraine. Russia controls about a fifth of Ukraine.

Mike Waltz, the US national security adviser, called on European states to spend more on defence and praised the UK and France for considering “contributing more forcefully to Ukraine’s security”.

“The fact that a third of our Nato allies still do not contribute the minimum of two per cent of their GDP to defence a decade after we all collectively made that agreement isn’t acceptable,” he said.

“We all have to contribute to our common defence, and we expect this to be a two way street for our European allies, and the fact that both the United Kingdom, France and others are talking about contributing more forcefully to Ukraine’s security, we think is a good thing.”

Marco Rubio also said that he was “convinced” Russia was willing to engage in a “serious process” to end the Ukraine war and said there would be “extraordinary opportunities” for ties between Washington and Moscow if the conflict was brought to a close.

Russia and the United States will try to improve ties but there are so far no signs of a major breakthrough on issues such as Ukraine, a Kremlin official has said.

“We agreed that we would take each other’s interests into account, but at the same time we would also promote bilateral relations, since both Moscow and Washington are interested in this,” Yuri Ushakov, a Kremlin foreign policy adviser, said after US-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia.

Asked if Moscow and Washington’s positions were converging, he said: “It’s hard to say so far that they’re getting closer, but there was a conversation about this.”

The US and the Russian delegations in Riyadh agreed that “two great superpowers” must maintain a dialogue, a Kremlin negotiator said.

“We have a very long, serious road ahead of us, but this is a very positive start to constructive discussions,” Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, said. “We talked about how two great superpowers cannot not communicate or conduct dialogue or understand each other, as was the case under President Biden.”

He also said that the two delegations had dined together.

“There were a lot of jokes and a desire [by the Americans] to at some point come to Russia. They were surprised that many restaurants were opening in Moscow, because if you watch CNN, everything is bad, [but] we talked about how everything is good,” he said.

At the press conference following the conclusion of the talks, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said that “everyone involved” in the Ukraine conflict had to agree to any solution agreed to end the war. He also said that the European Union needed to be involved in discussions “at some point”.

He added that it had been important to have Tuesday’s meeting and that “President Trump has made it very clear” that he wanted the war in Ukraine to end.

Mike Waltz, the US national security adviser, said President Trump was “determined” to move very quickly to bring an end to the war in Ukraine.

In a press conference after the Saudi talks ended after over four hours of discussions, he called it an “endless war” that had “turned into a meat grinder”.

The Russian and American delegations have started listening to each other but it was too early to talk about compromises, Russia’s sovereign wealth fund chief Kirill Dmitriev told Reuters after talks ended in Riyadh.

“I think it is too early to talk about compromises, we can say that the sides started communicating with each other, started listening to each other, started the dialogue,” Dmitriev said.

The United States and Russia agreed on Tuesday to address “irritants” to the Washington-Moscow relationship and begin working on a path to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, the US State Department said, making clear the effort was in its early stages.

“One phone call followed by one meeting is not sufficient to establish enduring peace,” spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said after meetings in Saudi Arabia.

In further reaction, a Kremlin negotiator told Russian state TV that Russia and the United States would discuss the Ukraine conflict in “due course”.

“We discussed and outlined our principled positions, and agreed that separate teams of negotiators will be in touch on this topic in due course,” Yuri Ushakov, President Putin’s foreign policy aide.

At the same time as the talks in Riyadh on Tuesday, President Zelensky of Ukraine met President Erdogan of Turkey in Ankara.

Zelensky flew into the Turkish capital from the United Arab Emirates late on Monday, saying on Telegram that he would discuss prisoner exchanges and other issues with Erdogan.

The talks took place at Erdogan’s presidential palace.

Fahrettin Altun, an aide of Erdogan, said on Monday that the pair would discuss how to “further strengthen cooperation” between the two nations.

The talks between Russia and the United States in Saudi Arabia were positive but there was little chance of a meeting between President Trump and President Putin before the end of the month, a member of Moscow’s delegation has said.

“A meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump was discussed, but it is unlikely to take place next week,” said Yuri Ushakov, a foreign policy adviser. He said that separate talks focusing on the war in Ukraine would begin at a later date.

The Kremlin described the meeting in Riyadh as a chance to restore relations with Washington. Kirill Dmitriev, the chief of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, said the talks had been “respectful, positive, and constructive”. He said that the US and Russian delegations had agreed that it was essential for the two “superpowers” to maintain a dialogue.

Moscow repeated its demand that Nato formally retract its 2008 pledge that Ukraine would one day become a member of the western military alliance.

He won’t be so bad. Last time his bark was worse than his bite. Take him seriously but not literally. He knows who the good guys are. He’s just unorthodox in his methods.

How many times have we heard such phrases from all who wanted to believe that Trump would not set out to shatter the current global order? But each day it becomes clearer that he has to be taken literally.

When he says he wants Greenland, he actually means it. Canada becoming the 51st state is not him having a little joke. And his version of bringing peace to Ukraine really does involve calling an aggressive dictator for a long chat, cutting out the leader of the country under attack, making concessions in advance of negotiations and completely ignoring the allies who have spent the past three years acting in concert with the US.

• Here’s how Starmer should pay for defence rise

China said on Tuesday it hoped “all parties and stakeholders can participate” in talks over the war in Ukraine.

Beijing’s foreign ministry spokesman, Guo Jiakun, said China was “happy to see all efforts towards peace”, adding: “At the same time, we hope that all parties and stakeholders can participate in the peace talks in due course”.

Ukraine has been excluded from discussions. Only US and Russia representatives are at the talks in Saudi Arabia.

Beijing has been accused of supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine. Earlier this week the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, called China a “key enabler” in the conflict.

The talks in Riyadh have broken for a “working lunch”, Russian officials said. Discussions lasted some three and a half hours this morning.

President Zelensky is the “elected leader of a sovereign nation”, Ukraine’s leader and government will be told during a visit to Kyiv by President Trump’s envoy.

Keith Kellogg, 80, a retired American general and decorated combat soldier, will be invited to visit the front line by Zelensky as part of a mission to reassure Ukraine as talks between Russia and the US get under way in Saudi Arabia.

“[Zelensky] is the elected leader of a sovereign nation, those decisions are his. Nobody will impose those on an elected leader of the sovereign nation,” Kellogg said.

His words were meant as a message to Ukraine that the US will not accept any Russian demands, made in the past, for a regime change as the price of a peace settlement concluded without him at the table.

Any peace deal “must respect Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, backed by strong security guarantees,” Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said after meeting Keith Kellogg, President Trump’s Ukraine and Europe envoy, on Tuesday.

After the talks with Kellogg, who is on a mission to reassure European allies that Trump’s intentions are honourable, Von der Leyen stressed that “now is a critical moment” to secure a long-term peace deal.

She expressed the EU’s willingness to work alongside the US to end the bloodshed and “help secure the just and lasting peace that Ukraine and its people rightfully deserve”.

Kellogg’s mission is to dispel fears that allies will be ignored. Playing down controversy last week, he has argued that all options remain on the table for security guarantees and peacekeeping, with no decisions yet made.

Russia has said there can be no prospect of an enduring peace in Ukraine unless Moscow’s concerns over national security are addressed.

“A lasting and long-term viable resolution is impossible without a comprehensive consideration of security issues on the continent,” Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said.

Russia demanded before it invaded Ukraine in 2022 that Nato roll back military deployments in eastern Europe and rescind a pledge that Ukraine would one day become a member of the western military alliance.

• US no longer an ally of Europe, ex-Nato official warns

European officials believe that President Trump is willing to withdraw American troops from the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the Financial Times reported this week.

The US negotiating team is being co-ordinated on a daily basis by a “situation room” chaired by JD Vance, the US vice-president, senior American officials say.

Secure conference calls include Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, and the national security adviser, Mike Waltz, who are at the table with Russia.

Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, is also in the negotiating team because he set up Saudi Arabia as the mediator during talks on Gaza.

Also in the war room are Peter Hegseth, the defence secretary; Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff; Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary; and Keith Kellogg, Trump’s envoy to Ukraine.

John Healey warned that there was “no clear accountability” in the MoD and it was no wonder it took an average of six years for a large programme to get underway.

He also said there was too much waste in the department and there was “added complexity where simplicity is needed”.

He said a new “quad” of senior military leaders would concentrate on “war fighting readiness and deterrence” and a new headquarters, previously announced, would be responsible for war planning.

He said a new armaments director would oversee £20 billion budget to build and sustain defence equipment.

However Healey said that although there had been a hollowing out of the armed forces, those who served did so with professionalism and could “fight now, fight tonight, fight as required”.

The defence secretary said “we must re-arm Britain” as he said investment in the armed forces would be “matched by reform”.

John Healey said the pathway to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent would be set out in the spring, and not earlier as speculated, and that the MoD was undergoing the biggest shake-up for 50 years.

“At this time we must re-arm Britain,” he said, adding: “We will match sustained investment with serious reform. It’ll mean growing the economy. It’ll mean a more muscular defence for a more dangerous world. It will mean Britain … is secure at home and strong abroad.”

John Healey, the defence secretary, has said “it is only the US that can provide the deterrence to Putin that will prevent him attack again”.

In a speech on defence reform at the Institute for Government in London, he said that the Europeans had to play a “leading part” in the security guarantees for Ukraine should there be a peace deal.

However, he added, it would “require a backstop from the US”.

The UK is trying to work out how many troops it could deploy to a peacekeeping force in Ukraine.

The US is braced for Russia to make “egregious” and non-negotiable demands, such as deposing President Zelensky and withdrawing Nato troops from eastern Europe during talks in Riyadh.

Keith Kellogg, President Trump’s Ukraine envoy, who is in Brussels, admitted that the US was braced as American negotiators sast down with Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy adviser, and his foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov.

“We don’t know what Ushakov is going to say. There may be some pretty egregious decisions,” he said. “There are things that may come up that, really, you can’t go there.”

Sir Ed Davey has called on the prime minister to recall parliament to debate plans to defend Ukraine.

The Liberal Democrat leader said it was vital to ensure that the government’s plans could be properly scrutinised. Parliament is in recess and neither the Commons nor the Lords are due to sit until February 24.

Davey said: “We must act immediately to save Ukraine from a shoddy deal cooked up by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Strong cross-party support from across the House will strengthen the prime minister’s hand and allow the UK to step up and lead in Europe at this critical moment.”

President Putin is ready to meet President Zelensky, but there are questions over the Ukrainian leader’s legitimacy, Russia has claimed.

“Putin has said himself that, if necessary, he is prepared to hold talks with Zelensky,” Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said.

However, he stated there should be a “serious discussion” about Zelensky’s right to make decisions on behalf of Ukraine.

Zelensky’s first presidential term ended in May, but new elections were postponed under martial law that was introduced when Russia invaded in 2022. The decision was supported by the vast majority of Ukrainians, polls show.

Kyiv is coming under pressure from US officials to hold a fresh vote before the end of the war. Putin secured a fifth presidential term last year at elections that were widely described as a farce.

Russia has no objection to Ukraine joining the European Union but remains opposed to its membership of any western military alliance, the Kremlin has said.

“This is economic integration … and no-one can dictate anything here to any country and we are not going to do so,” said Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman.

“We have a completely different position on issues related to security, defence or military alliances. Here we have a different approach and it is well known to everyone.”

In 2014, Moscow pressured Kyiv into pulling out of a deal with Brussels that would have taken it closer to the EU. The move sparked protests in Ukraine that eventually toppled President Yanukovych, Putin’s ally. Russia responded by deploying forces to Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

Saying Britain was prepared to put troops on the ground for peacekeeping gave Sir Keir Starmer credibility with the White House, a former British ambassador to the US has said.

Lord Darroch told Sky News that the prime minister being the “first one to break cover” and say he would deploy British troops gave him “a certain credibility to get through a door in the White House and be listened to”.

Starmer is quickly becoming “quite a pivotal figure for Europe on this”, he added.

Moscow has said it expects progress on economic talks with the US within “two [or] three months”, Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, said.

He also claimed US businesses had lost more than $300 billion after leaving Russian markets following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

The US understands that standing with Ukraine is in its national interest, Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraine’s minister of strategic industries, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. “Our European partners have confirmed that they will stand with Ukraine regardless of the position of the USA,” he said.

“Look, at the end of the day, I believe that all the rhetoric aside, the US and the White House administration understand very well that standing with Ukraine is in their national interest as well.”

He added that “everybody agrees” that no peace agreement or ceasefire could be forced upon Ukraine.

Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, is holding talks with his Russian counterpart on Tuesday as Ukrainian fears deepen about President Trump’s strategy for a permanent peace.

Also arriving in the Saudi capital — tellingly, as far as Ukraine is concerned — is Kirill Dmitriev, Russia’s sovereign wealth chief, who is holding talks with American officials on strengthening economic co-operation between Moscow and Washington.

The Trump administration is reported to have set itself an ambitious target of Easter, which is just over two months away, to finalise a ceasefire deal for the three-year conflict.

• Ukraine’s fears deepen as US and Russia discuss ‘end of war by Easter’

The focus at the moment should be on ensuring Ukraine has a “principal voice” in negotiations and increasing defence spending at home, the shadow defence secretary has said.

James Cartlidge told Sky News that the government should “actually get on with” increasing defence spending. “We have wasted months in this country,” he said.

When it was put to him that the Conservative government “wasted years”, Cartlidge pointed to increasing defence spending to 2.3 per cent under Boris Johnson and their “ready to go” plan at the election to increase it to 2.5 per cent by 2030.

“The key thing is about speed and giving the MoD a multi-year plan” so they can order the munitions needed, but Labour’s spending review has put that on pause, he said.

A Russian drone attack hit a residential building in the city of Dolynska, central Ukraine, injuring a mother and her two children and forcing evacuations from 38 apartments, a regional official said on Tuesday.

“A difficult night for the Kirovohrad region,” Andriy Raikovych, the regional governor, said in a post on the Telegram messaging app. “An enemy drone hit a high-rise building in Dolynska.”

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The mother and one of the children were taken to hospital, said Raikovych, who posted photos of flames bursting out of windows of a high-storey apartment building.

The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, said that drone debris fell in one of the districts of the capital, causing a fire at an industrial premises.

Ukrainian officials are not taking part in Tuesday’s meeting, and President Zelensky said that his country would not accept the outcome if Kyiv did not take part.

The Ukrainian leader is in Turkey after visiting Saudi’s neighbour the United Arab Emirates on Monday.

He will visit Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.

The location for the talks, Diriyah Palace, is next to the Ritz Carlton hotel, which became famous in 2017 after Saudi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman detained other princes and the country’s elite there as part of what the royal court called a crackdown on corruption, that also sidelined any potential challenge to his taking control of the kingdom.

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Hosting the talks is a major step toward a goal Prince Mohammed has pursued throughout the war — putting the kingdom in the middle of diplomatic negotiations.

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For Prince Mohammed, also known as MBS, once described as a “pariah” by former President Biden over the 2018 killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, hosting such talks burnish the otherwise-tarnished image the West has for him.

The Saudi daily newspaper Okaz described the moment as the “world’s eye on Riyadh.”

Sir Keir Starmer will tell President Trump that the United States must provide a security “backstop” to Ukraine as the only way to deter Russia from future attacks.

The prime minister will urge Trump to offer lasting security guarantees to Kyiv when he becomes the first European leader to hold talks with the president in Washington next week.

Starmer was setting out the UK’s strategy after an emergency summit of European leaders in Paris to discuss how to respond to demands from the US for Europe to take the lead in providing security to Ukraine in the face of any future Russian aggression.

• Provide security ‘backstop’ for Ukraine, Starmer to tell Trump

As talks begin in the Saudi capital, fighting continues between Russia and Ukraine.

Russia said on Tuesday that Ukrainian drones had attacked a pipeline which pumps about one per cent of global crude supply.

The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) said that a crude oil transport facility, the Kropotkinskaya station in the Krasnodar region of southern Russia, was struck by several drones loaded with explosives and shrapnel. Kropotkinskaya is the largest pumping station on the pipeline in Russia.

Overnight, the Ukrainian military said Russia launched 176 drones. Kyiv claimed its air force shot down 103 of the drones and 67 did not reach their target.

Before Tuesday’s meeting, Russian officials have been lavishing praise on President Trump.

The head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund described him as a “problem solver”. “We really see that President Trump and his team is a team of problem solvers, people who have already addressed a number of big challenges very swiftly, very efficiently and very successfully,” Kirill Dmitriev said.

Dmitriev, an American-educated former Goldman Sachs banker, played a role in early contacts between Moscow and Washington during Trump’s first term as president.

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MPs would probably be given a vote before British troops were sent to Ukraine, the transport secretary has said.

Heidi Alexander told Times Radio: “It is my understanding that before any troop deployment, it would be normal, if circumstances allow, for parliament to be consulted.

“But, as I say, I do think that we are some way away from this at the moment.”

On Monday, the prime minister’s spokesman said parliament would be consulted “as appropriate”.

Talks between American and Russian officials are expected to begin imminently in the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh. They will take place at the Diriyah Palace, in the southwest of the city.

Among those attending will be the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.

Officials said the talks would focus on ending the Ukraine war and restoring “the whole complex” of Russia-US ties. They could pave the way for a summit between President Trump and his Russian counterpart, President Putin.

The talks in Riyadh have now ended, according to Russian and American officials. They lasted four and a half hours.