LONDON — Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer in London on Thursday in a strong show of support on the eve of a key United States-Russia summit from which Kyiv and its European allies have been excluded.
Starmer greeted Zelenskyy with a warm hug and handshake on the steps of his Downing Street residence, only hours after the Ukrainian leader took part in a virtual call with US President Donald Trump.
Trump and Vladimir Putin will meet at an air base in Alaska on Friday, the first time the Russian leader has been permitted on Western soil since his Feb. 24, 2022, invasion of Ukraine, which has killed tens of thousands of people.
WARM HUG United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer (left) embraces Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as he greets him outside 10 Downing Street in the British capital London on Aug. 14, 2025. AFP PHOTO
A stepped-up Russian offensive, and the fact Zelenskyy has not been invited to the Anchorage meeting on Friday, have heightened fears that Trump and Putin could strike a deal that forces painful concessions on Ukraine.
But Starmer said on Wednesday there was now a “viable” chance for a ceasefire in Ukraine after more than three years of fighting.
Near the front line on Thursday, Ukraine fired dozens of drones at Russia overnight into the early morning, wounding three people and sparking fires including at an oil refinery in the southern city of Volgograd.
Kyiv calls the strikes fair retaliation for Moscow’s daily missile and drone barrages on its own civilians.
With such high stakes, all sides were pushing hard in the hours before Friday’s meeting.
Three-way meeting?
Zelenskyy, who has refused to surrender territory to Russia, joined the call from Berlin with Trump, as did European leaders who voiced confidence afterward that the US leader would seek a ceasefire rather than concessions by Kyiv.
Trump has sent mixed messages, saying he could quickly organize a three-way summit afterward with both Zelenskyy and Putin, but also warning of his impatience with Putin.
“There may be no second meeting because, if I feel that it’s not appropriate to have it because I didn’t get the answers that we have to have, then we are not going to have a second meeting,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday.
But he added: “If the first one goes OK, we’ll have a quick second one,” involving both Putin and Zelenskyy.
Zelenskyy, after being berated by Trump during their meeting in the White House in February, has publicly supported US diplomacy but has made clear his deep skepticism.
“I have told my colleagues — the US president and our European friends — that Putin definitely does not want peace,” Zelenskyy said.
As the war rages on in eastern Ukraine, Zelenskyy was in Germany’s capital Berlin on Wednesday joining Chancellor Friedrich Merz on an online call with other European leaders, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and European Union chiefs, to show a united stance against Russia.
Starmer on Wednesday said Ukraine’s military backers, the so-called Coalition of the Willing, had drawn up workable military plans in case of a ceasefire, but were also ready to add pressure on Russia through sanctions.
“For [the three-and-a-half] years this conflict has been going, we haven’t got anywhere near… a viable way of bringing it to a ceasefire,” Starmer told Wednesday’s meeting of European leaders.
“Now we do have that chance, because of the work that the [US] president has put in,” he said.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte declared: “The ball is now in Putin’s court.”
