On the eve of the G20 summit in Johannesburg, the prime minister promised that Britain would press for a full ceasefire in Ukraine and “meaningful peace negotiations”, while tightening the financial noose on Moscow and pushing for Russia’s frozen assets to underpin long‑term loans to Kyiv.
In remarks released by Downing Street on Friday, Starmer said Ukraine’s “friends and partners” would meet in the margins of the G20 to discuss how to halt the fighting and convert a fragile diplomatic opening into what he called a “just and lasting peace”.
His intervention places the United Kingdom squarely in the middle of high‑stakes bargaining between Washington, Kyiv and European capitals over a US‑drafted 28‑point peace plan that has already drawn fire from Ukrainian and European officials for the concessions it reportedly demands from Ukraine. Starmer has chosen to align himself explicitly with President Donald Trump’s “push for peace”, but with a clear proviso: the current proposal, he says, must be strengthened so that it does not leave Ukraine exposed to renewed Russian aggression.
At the same time, the prime minister is coupling this diplomatic positioning with a harder edge on sanctions and money. He wants G20 leaders to go further in cutting “Putin’s finance flows” by weaning their economies off Russian gas and to accelerate work on “reparations loans” – multi‑year financing for Ukraine secured against Russia’s frozen sovereign assets in the West.
For Starmer, the twin themes of peace and pressure are meant to reinforce each other. “We must fight hard for peace,” he said, arguing that the only serious obstacle to a ceasefire was Russia itself.
Downing Street’s statement casts Moscow as the outlier around the G20 table: the only government in the group currently waging a large‑scale offensive and, by London’s account, the only one not genuinely seeking an end to the war. As an example, Starmer pointed to the week leading up to the summit, during which British officials estimate Russia fired almost 1,000 drones and 54 precision‑guided missiles at Ukrainian targets, killing and injuring civilians including children and older people.
“While they pretend to be serious about peace, they continue a murderous rampage,” he said, in some of his strongest public language on the conflict since taking office.
Starmer’s argument rests on a simple proposition: that no one wants peace more than Ukrainians themselves, who have endured almost four years of full‑scale war. He insisted that Kyiv has been ready to negotiate “for months”, and that it is Moscow that has stalled, even as it offers warm words about a settlement.
Those remarks are aimed as much at fellow leaders in Johannesburg as at voters back home. After months in which Trump’s White House has sought to take charge of diplomacy through a back‑channelled peace blueprint, European governments are trying to reassert their role and ensure Ukraine has a real say in shaping any deal.
The focal point of those concerns is the 28‑point plan drafted largely by Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian sovereign wealth figure Kirill Dmitriev. Although the full text has not been made public, reports in Western media suggest it would formalise Russian control of occupied territory in eastern Ukraine, cap the size of Ukraine’s armed forces at around 600,000 troops and require Kyiv to abandon its bid to join NATO.
In Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelensky has described this as one of the most difficult moments in Ukraine’s modern history, saying his country is being forced to choose between its “dignity” and the backing of a key partner in Washington. European leaders, including Starmer, French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Friedrich Merz, have voiced unease that the plan, in its current form, could lock in Russian territorial gains and leave Ukraine vulnerable once any ceasefire expires.
Yet few want an open confrontation with Trump, whose leverage remains decisive because of American military and financial support for Ukraine. The result is a delicate diplomatic dance. Starmer’s line – that Britain will support Trump’s instinct to end the war but press to “strengthen” the plan – reflects a broader attempt by a group of around ten G20 and G7 leaders to amend rather than reject the US blueprint.
For Starmer personally, the G20 moment is the culmination of a year‑long effort to cast himself as a bridge between Washington and Europe on Ukraine. In March, he convened leaders from 16 countries, along with the EU and NATO, in London for the “Securing Our Future” summit, billed as a European‑led attempt to define a post‑war security and reconstruction framework for Ukraine before Trump and Zelensky met in Washington.
That London meeting produced the early outlines of a “coalition of the willing” prepared to back Ukraine over the long term, and a concept for a Multinational Force – Ukraine (MNF‑U), which could help guarantee any future ceasefire or peace deal on the ground. The United Kingdom used the summit to pledge billions in additional support, including a £2.2 billion loan package for military assistance underpinned by Russia’s frozen assets and £1.6 billion in export finance for air‑defence systems.
Earlier in 2025, Starmer also welcomed a Trump‑brokered 30‑day ceasefire window, under which Ukraine agreed in principle to halt fighting nationwide if Russia reciprocated. That deal, used by the White House as the basis for resuming US military aid and intelligence‑sharing with Kyiv, was hailed at the time as a breakthrough but criticised by some European officials, who feared Russia might use any pause to regroup.
The current G20 discussions are therefore not starting from scratch, but from a series of partial, time‑limited deals and a growing patchwork of European and transatlantic initiatives. Starmer’s latest remarks signal that, while he is willing to work within Trump’s framework, he wants to anchor any agreement in a more robust security and financial architecture.
The most distinctive element of that architecture is the push to turn Russia’s own money into a long‑term funding stream for Ukraine.
Since 2022 Western governments have frozen an estimated $300–335 billion of Russian assets, including about €200–210 billion in central bank reserves held in European financial institutions such as Euroclear. So far, most of this capital has remained untouched, with G7 states wary of setting a precedent by seizing sovereign reserves outright.
Instead, leaders have experimented with using the interest those assets generate. At the G7 summit in June 2024 they agreed a $50 billion loan to Ukraine, to be repaid through the “extraordinary revenues” – the windfall profits – from Russia’s frozen reserves. Disbursements from that scheme, sometimes referred to as the ERA mechanism, began late last year. By the spring of 2025, Kyiv reported receiving several billion euros via US, EU, British and Canadian tranches.
The European Union has gone further, deciding to dedicate roughly €2.5–3 billion a year in profits from Russia’s immobilised assets to support Ukraine, with most of the money routed through the European Peace Facility to fund weapons and ammunition.
What Starmer now wants to see is a scaling‑up and formalisation of these experiments into what he calls “reparations loans” – a loan system in which Russian sovereign assets serve as collateral for much larger, multi‑year packages of economic and military support. The idea, backed in different forms by Brussels and Berlin, is that this could mobilise well over €100 billion for Ukraine’s defence and reconstruction without requiring equivalent sums from Western taxpayers.
Supporters argue that framing such measures as temporary “countermeasures” under international law – rather than permanent confiscation – could help minimise legal and financial‑market risks. Some analysts suggest that, over time, courts could also enforce Ukrainian reparations claims against non‑immune Russian property overseas, broadening the pool of assets available.
Germany’s Merz has endorsed exploring the use of Russian central bank reserves to raise around €140 billion for Ukraine, a notable shift from the caution that previously prevailed in Berlin. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has become closely associated with efforts to turn frozen assets and their profits into a stable funding source for Kyiv.
Britain’s role in these debates has been to push for a more assertive line. The government has already begun issuing loans backed by the ERA framework and other asset‑linked mechanisms, and ministers have repeatedly suggested that Russia, not Western taxpayers, should pay for the damage caused by the invasion. Starmer’s G20 comments, with their call to “intensify” work on reparations loans, underline that this remains a central plank of UK policy.
Alongside finance, energy sits at the heart of the prime minister’s strategy for constraining Moscow. By urging G20 partners to “cut off Putin’s finance flows by ending our reliance on Russian gas”, he is tapping into a European effort that has already sharply reduced Russian gas imports since 2021.
The EU’s REPowerEU programme, launched in response to the invasion, has seen the bloc slash the share of Russian gas in its imports from around 45 per cent before the war to low single digits by 2025, replacing it with liquefied natural gas from other suppliers, greater use of renewables, energy savings and, in some countries, more nuclear power. The United Kingdom has always been less directly dependent on Russian gas than many EU member states, but has championed this diversification agenda and framed it as a security necessity as well as a climate policy.
For Starmer, the logic is that every billion dollars stripped from Russian fossil fuel revenues is a billion less the Kremlin can spend on drones, missiles and armoured vehicles. Linking sanctions, energy policy and reparations loans allows him to argue that Western publics can support Ukraine without signing up to an open‑ended drain on their own budgets.
None of this, however, resolves the immediate question hanging over Johannesburg: what kind of ceasefire, and on what terms, can Ukraine accept?
Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has cautiously welcomed the broad thrust of Trump’s proposal, describing it as a potential basis for a final settlement. At the same time, his forces have intensified strikes on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure in the days before the G20, including the drone and missile barrage cited by Starmer. For Kyiv and its supporters, that combination of escalated attacks and positive rhetoric fuels scepticism that Moscow is negotiating in good faith.
European leaders sharing Starmer’s concerns have been trying to co‑ordinate their message to Washington. Diplomats say a loose grouping of around ten countries – including the UK, France, Germany, Canada and Japan, along with EU officials – has taken shape to press for changes to the 28‑point plan. Their priorities include avoiding explicit language that would force Ukraine to cede territory permanently, softening provisions that would cap its armed forces too severely, and preserving at least the possibility of closer future security ties between Ukraine and NATO.
For Zelensky, the domestic politics are fraught. Any agreement seen at home as trading land for peace, or accepting permanent demilitarisation, risks provoking a backlash from a population that has endured years of bombardment and occupation. At the same time, alienating the United States, still Ukraine’s most important military backer, would carry its own grave risks.
Behind closed doors in Johannesburg, Starmer and his counterparts are therefore trying to design a path out of the war that does not force Ukraine to choose between its territorial integrity and its alliances. One idea, building on the London summit’s work, is that a strengthened plan could be accompanied by robust security guarantees from a “coalition of the willing”, potentially including deployment of the Multinational Force – Ukraine once a ceasefire is in place. Another is that any demilitarisation clauses would need to be balanced by clearly enforceable limits on Russian forces and weapons in the region.
Even if a ceasefire can be agreed, turning it into a durable peace will be a longer task. Much will depend on how quickly the legal and financial structures around reparations loans can be put in place, how far G20 and G7 partners are prepared to go in squeezing Russia’s energy income, and whether Washington and European capitals can stay aligned if domestic politics in any of them shift.
For now, Starmer is betting that he can support Trump’s desire to get a deal while steering it in a direction that meets European and Ukrainian concerns, and that by making Russia pay for the war through its frozen wealth and dwindling energy revenues, he can reassure British voters that backing Ukraine is compatible with fiscal prudence.
His language at the G20 – simultaneously supportive of the American push and sharply critical of Russia – reflects that balancing act. As the talks in Johannesburg move behind closed doors, the outcome will show whether that strategy gives London real leverage over the shape of any peace, or leaves it trying to bridge a gap that may yet prove too wide.