Starmer to host Zelensky and EU leaders for peace talks after Russia launches overnight air attacks on Kyiv
Sir Keir Starmer will meet with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday, along with other EU leaders, to discuss next steps from Ukrainian-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 took place amid ongoing talks between Ukrainian and US officials about a Washington-backed plan to end the war. Ukrainian negotiators were in Florida for three days last week to meet with Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.
On Sunday, cabinet minister Pat McFadden said Ukraine’s security and self-determination would be “at the heart” of the leaders’ discussions in London. He said the talks were at a “really pivotal moment.”
Meanwhile, Mr Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, who will leave his post in January, told a defense forum that a deal to end the Ukraine war was “really close” and that it now just depends on resolving two main issues.
These are the future of Ukraine’s Donbas region and the Zaporzhzhia nuclear power plant. Reagan told the National Defense Forum: “If we get those two things done, I think the rest of the stuff will work out pretty well. We’re almost there.”
However, Russian media quoted Yuri Ushakov, President Vladimir Putin’s top aide on foreign policy, as saying that the United States would have to make “radical changes to its own documents” regarding Ukraine. He did not say what changes Moscow wanted Washington to make.
Despite progress in peace talks, Russia continued to bomb Ukraine with drone strikes until Sunday.
At least three people have been killed in missile and drone attacks in Ukraine, according to regional police. A man was killed in a drone attack in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region on Saturday night, while a combined missile and drone attack on infrastructure in the center of the city of Kremenchuk caused power and water outages.
Kremenchuk is home to one of Ukraine’s largest oil refineries and is an industrial centre.
According to the regional police, two people were killed and seven others were injured in the shelling of the Kharkiv region of Ukraine by Russian troops.
Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov welcomed the Trump administration’s new national security strategy.
In commentary published Sunday by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, he said the strategy was “encouraging.”
“There are statements there against conflict and in favor of dialogue and good relations,” he added.
The document, released by the White House on Friday, makes clear that the United States wants to improve relations with Russia after Moscow has been treated as a global pariah for years, and that ending the war is to “restore strategic stability with Russia,” a core interest of the United States.
