Trump’s visit with UK’s Starmer offers sobering preview for Ukraine

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer flattered President Donald Trump with a basket of gifts on his first visit to the White House on Thursday, including commitments to spend more money on defense, lavish praise and a letter from King Charles III inviting Trump to a state dinner.

Trump was exceedingly pleased. But that didn’t mean Starmer got anything in return.

Trump appeared unmoved by Starmer’s desperate appeal for a stronger U.S. commitment to protecting Ukraine, if and when its war with Russia ends. Starmer, conscious that Trump has rejected pleas to provide “security guarantees” for Ukraine, has been asking for something less: a U.S. commitment to “backstop” European efforts to help defend Ukraine from any future invasion by Russia.

Trump said no to all of it.

“I don’t think so,” Trump said alongside Starmer in the Oval Office. “I think when we have a deal, it’s going to be the deal.”

The hard-nosed attitude offered a sobering preview to European allies hoping for an opening ahead of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s White House visit on Friday, when he is expected to sign away a large chunk of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals to U.S. investors in hopes of winning Trump over.

Trump, sitting beside Starmer on Thursday, shrugged off questions about what, if anything, the U.S. would do to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin and said he trusted the former KGB agent not to renege on a potential peace deal. He suggested that the economic agreement he’ll sign with Zelenskyy would be enough to hold Russia at bay.

“It’s a backstop, you could say,” Trump said of the minerals deal, coopting Starmer’s language. “I don’t think anybody’s going to play around if we’re there with a lot of workers.”

Perhaps most worrying for Starmer and other NATO allies was the president’s nonchalance about whether the U.S. would respond militarily in a situation where British troops were attacked in Ukraine.

“They don’t need much help. They can take care of themselves very well,” Trump said, before hedging slightly. “The British have been incredible soldiers, incredible military, and they can take care of themselves. But if they need help, I’ll always be with the British, okay? I will always be with them. But they don’t need help.”

Shortly after Trump made those comments in the Oval Office, a reporter asked him point-blank during the press conference a question that has weighed heavily on all of Europe — whether he supports Article V of the NATO charter, which deems an attack on any member an attack on all.

“I support it,” the president replied, suggesting it was unlikely to be invoked should a NATO ally be attacked while deployed in Ukraine. “I don’t think we’re going to have any reason for it. I think we’re going to have a very successful peace, and I think it’s going to be a long lasting peace. And I think it’s going to happen hopefully quickly. If it doesn’t happen quickly, it may not happen at all.”

Asked if their talks succeeded in getting Trump closer to providing a military backstop to Europe’s security guarantees, Starmer said only that it had been “a very productive discussion,” noting that a peace deal “has to come first.”

He added: “Our teams are going to be talking about how we make sure that deal sticks, is lasting and enforced.”

Starmer’s visit comes days after French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a similar message during meetings with Trump on Monday: that Europe is ready to do more to shore up continental defenses and to aid Ukraine but that America’s military backing is still critical in keeping Putin in check.

The message comes as Trump has increasingly aligned U.S. interests with Russia, taking up Putin’s talking points about its invasion of Ukraine as Trump works to build an alliance with the rogue state.

Starmer, who returned Labour to No. 10 Downing Street last year after his party’s 14 years out of power in large part by appealing to disaffected, blue collar voters, approached Trump with warmth and deference during their initial appearance in front of the cameras. As Macron and others have, the prime minister credited Trump for shifting the conversation about Ukraine toward ending the war.

“You’ve created a moment of tremendous opportunity to reach a historic peace deal, a deal that I think would be celebrated in Ukraine and around the world,” Starmer said to Trump during a press conference in the East Room following the talks. “That is the prize. But we have to get it right.

He tried to use that praise to subtly move Trump toward Europe’s view, a strategy that often prevents escalation with Trump but seldom results in changing his position.

“There’s a famous slogan in the United Kingdom from after the second World War, that is, that we have to win the peace,” Starmer said. “And that is what we must do now, because it can’t be peace that rewards the aggressor, or that gives encouragement to regimes like Iran. We agree history must be on the side of the peacemaker, not the invader.”

Even with Trump and Zelenskyy set to sign the minerals pact on Friday, an immediate end to the three-year-long war does not appear close. Russia has continued to bombard Ukraine’s capital and the Kremlin’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, this week rejected any truce that would include EU peacekeepers on the ground in Ukraine or force Russia to freeze the war along current battle lines.

With the fighting ongoing and so much uncertainty about when and how the conflict could end, the U.S. and its top allies appear locked in a diplomatic Catch-22 when it comes to clarifying their future commitments. The U.S. wants to know more details about Europe’s willingness to back Ukraine militarily before it commits to anything else. But Europeans, still divided over how much to involve themselves directly in a postwar Ukraine, are eager to know that any peacekeeping missions will be backed by American hard power.

“I don’t like talking about phase two until I get phase one,” Trump said during the press conference. “Phase one is I have to make peace and we have to get Russia to agree. We have to get Ukraine to agree. And I think we will.”

Trump praised Starmer’s plan, unveiled earlier this week, to increase Britain’s defense spending to 2.5 percent of GDP, urging the U.K. and other NATO allies to continue in that direction.

“The disaster in Ukraine shows exactly why it’s so important for the United Kingdom and other NATO partners to make large investments in their defense capabilities,” Trump said. “In many cases, 4 percent or 5 percent of GDP would be appropriate.”

Trump has continued to rule out putting American boots on the ground in Ukraine. But, as Starmer made clear, that isn’t what Europeans are asking for.

According to British officials, Starmer planned to ask Trump for aerial intelligence surveillance and last resort air cover in the event of another Russian incursion into Ukraine.

If they achieve nothing else, European leaders are at least asking for Trump not to further upend the status quo: to remain committed to NATO and Article V of the organization’s charter that deems an attack on any member an attack on all; not to cut Ukraine’s access to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite imaging service; to remain in contact with traditional allies despite a clear inclination toward diplomatic freelancing and engaging unilaterally with Putin.

Trump has shown he is unlikely to promise them anything. But he did offer his own personal tribute to the country that once boasted of its special relationship with the U.S.

As he opened his joint press conference with Starmer, he said proudly that he had restored a bust of Winston Churchill “to its rightful place,” the Oval Office.