British Prime Minister Keir Starmer deployed a mixture of flattery, deference and even a royal invitation to London on Thursday as he worked to keep President Donald Trump from turning on Ukraine and Europe ahead of peace talks with Russia, becoming the latest international leader to play supplicant in the Oval Office as Trump threatens to upend the global order.
Starmer’s was the most recent in a rapid-fire stretch of visits from U.S. allies as they reel from Trump’s embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin amid efforts to end the war in Ukraine. After Trump blamed the smaller country last week for the Kremlin’s unprovoked 2022 invasion, then aligned with Russia and North Korea against Kyiv in the United Nations, foreign leaders have decided that face-to-face meetings with the U.S. president are the best way to bend his policy.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday offered his silver tongue to “Cher Donald” — French for “Dear Donald.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom Trump last week called a “dictator,” will bring tokens of appreciation from Kyiv on Friday. But no other leader than Starmer could slip a cream-colored letter from King Charles III out of his jacket and present it to Trump, a longtime fan of the British royal family.
Trump read it on the spot on Thursday, in front of rolling cameras, at Starmer’s urging.
His Majesty The King wanted to know, Starmer said: “I’ve got to tell him what your reaction is.”
Trump spent a silent 16 seconds reading the letter, which had the king’s regal red crest emblazoned at the top.
“Oh, that’s nice. Well, that is really nice,” Trump said, flipping to the second page of the missive to check that Charles had taken royal pen to royal paper to make the missive official. “That’s quite a signature. Isn’t that beautiful?”
He asked Starmer to read aloud a key paragraph.
“It’s an invitation for a second state visit. This is really special. This has never happened before. This is unprecedented,” Starmer said, calling the fact that Trump would be invited again during his second term “truly historic.”
“And that says at Windsor. That’s really something,” Trump said. “I’m going to keep that one,” he concluded, holding up the letter for the cameras.
Amid the buttering up of Trump, Starmer emphasized the shared view across Europe that any peace deal with Russia needs to be “enduring,” their shorthand for their lack of trust in Putin and belief that peace needs to be secured with hard power: foreign troops on the ground in Ukraine, backed up by U.S. might from abroad.
British and French leaders have been mulling a European deployment of troops to Ukraine to back any deal, and Starmer declared Thursday his readiness to deploy British “boots on the ground” to keep the peace there.
Starmer and Macron fear that European deployments will not be credible if the Trump administration holds back from endorsing and supporting them. At a minimum, European officials hope to be helped with Washington’s heavy airlift capabilities, its air-defense systems and long-range missiles — none of which would need to be stationed in Ukraine.
Macron exited his Monday meeting with Trump declaring that he had heard the U.S. leader’s willingness to back up a European deployment in their conversation. Trump himself remained silent on the matter.
Next to the British leader on Thursday, Trump dismissed worries that Putin would break a deal, saying that both he and Starmer were in favor of “trust and verify,” echoing a Russian saying that was picked up by former president Ronald Reagan. “I have confidence that if we make a deal, it’s going to hold.”
The president was less clear whether he was willing to offer a U.S. backstop to European troops in Ukraine.
“I don’t know when you say backstop, you mean a backstop psychologically, or militarily or what, but we are a backstop because we’ll be over there. We’ll be working in the country” extracting natural resources as part of the minerals deal that Trump and Zelensky plan to endorse on Friday, Trump told a reporter.
Starmer, Macron and other leaders have been following a playbook that worked well during Trump’s first term: smother the president with praise while framing their desires as ones they say are Trump’s.
Starmer also brought a commitment to defense spending increases, announcing on Tuesday before his trip that his government would raise the military budget to 2.5 percent of the nation’s annual economic turnover by 2027, in line with Trump’s demand that allies rely less on the United States.
“Mr. President, I welcome your deep and personal commitment to bring peace and to stop the killing. You’ve created a moment of tremendous opportunity to reach this historic peace deal,” Starmer told Trump.
But, he said, “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.”
Trump didn’t contradict him, though he has spent two weeks minimizing Russia’s decision to invade and focusing on Ukraine’s supposed culpability for failing to strike a deal to hand over some of its territory three years ago and avoid the Russian aggression.
Instead, the U.S. leader focused on minimizing areas of disagreement, complimenting Starmer’s “beautiful accent” and saying that he expected London and Washington to strike a trade deal that would help Britain avoid U.S. tariffs. British leaders have highlighted to Trump that trade with the United States is relatively balanced, unlike the European Union that they departed in 2020. The European Union sells more to the United States than it buys, and that irks the president.
“He was working hard. I’ll tell you that he earned whatever the hell they pay him over there. But he tried,” Trump said of Starmer’s efforts to avoid tariffs.
Trump even offered gentler words for Zelensky after his harsh rhetoric last week, saying that Ukrainians “have fought very bravely, no matter how you figure.”
Friday’s meeting with Zelensky will complete the week’s trifecta of visits with foreign leaders, as they solemnize a minerals partnership that Trump says will help Ukraine repay the help it has received from Washington since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
Ukrainians say that they are satisfied with the deal, which has no specific monetary targets, unlike an initial version that demanded $500 billion, far more than the value of U.S. assistance for the country to date.
The final framework of the deal includes no specific U.S. security guarantees. U.S. officials say that bolstering commercial interests in Ukraine will deter Russia and deepen Washington’s commitment to the country.
Jacqueline Alemany contributed to this report.