LONDON (Reuters) -Britain on Friday called for a raft of measures against Russia to strengthen Ukraine’s hand ahead of any future peace talks, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy heads to London for discussions with key allies.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office said he would press a meeting of the “Coalition of the Willing” countries that have pledged to strengthen support for Ukraine to take Russian oil and gas off the global market, use frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine, and give Kyiv more long-range missiles.
The meeting comes after U.S. President Donald Trump hit Russia’s two biggest oil companies with sanctions, in a dramatic U-turn after he said last week that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin would soon hold a summit in Budapest to try to end the war in Ukraine.
Starmer said Putin had shown he was not serious about proposals to end the war.
“Time and again we offer Putin the chance to end his needless invasion, to stop the killing and recall his troops, but he repeatedly rejects those proposals and any chance of peace,” Starmer said in a statement.
“We must ratchet up the pressure on Russia and build on President Trump’s decisive action.”
Friday’s talks in London will be a mixture of in-person and virtual, with NATO chief Mark Rutte, Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen expected to join Starmer and Zelenskiy in London.
Zelenskiy welcomed Trump’s energy sanctions in a trip to Brussels on Thursday, where he also urged European leaders to give Kyiv long-range weapons and use frozen Russian assets to arm Ukraine further.
Moscow has said it would deliver a “painful response” if the assets were seized under the plan to use them to provide a 140 billion-euro ($163 billion) loan to Kyiv.
In another bid to starve Moscow of revenue, the EU approved a 19th package of sanctions that includes a ban on Russian liquefied natural gas imports.
(Reporting by Alistair Smout, editing by Ed Osmond)
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