Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine wants the US to stay involved in efforts to end the war after a meeting of western allies in London that took place without Donald Trump.
The Ukrainian leader chose not to overtly lobby for the supply of US Tomahawk cruise missiles at a meeting of more than 20 mainly European leaders from the “coalition of the willing” but instead emphasised the need for the west to work together.
“We are not finding and searching how to stop Putin and how to finish this work without the US,” Zelenskyy emphasised at the end of the hybrid meeting aimed at discussing how to step up pressure on the Russian leader ahead of winter.
The Ukrainian leader also said that when it came to the post-war security guarantees for his country “we need to have the United States”.
Warning that “Putin wants to divide us”, Zelenskyy said that while Trump had declined to greenlight the supply of Tomahawks, western nations had previously “evolved together” by providing Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles, followed by US Atacms.
It was a hint that he hoped Trump could eventually be persuaded into providing a weapon that he believes could impact Russia’s military-industrial complex and could change the Kremlin’s thinking over whether to negotiate for peace.
Earlier, the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, told the meeting he believed “there’s further we can do on capability, particularly … long-range capability”, an indication that the UK wants Ukraine’s allies to supply long-range missiles and help Kyiv strike Russian targets deep behind the frontline.
This week, Ukraine used a British Storm Shadow missile to bomb a Russian plant in Bryansk that produced explosives and rocket fuel. But the US has so far declined to supply Tomahawk cruise missiles, a proposal that has also prompted concern in Moscow.
Zelenskyy said Russia was trying to cause a “humanitarian disaster” this winter, adding: “We’re thankful to you that we are not alone in this situation – from the very beginning of the war but especially now, it’s very important.”
Earlier, the Ukrainian leader visited King Charles at Windsor before heading to Downing Street for a one-on-one meeting with Starmer. The pair then moved to the Foreign Office for the full meeting with European leaders.
Others attending in-person included Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, and Dick Schoof, the prime minister of the Netherlands. The remainder participated online.
The online and in-person gathering came a day after EU leaders failed to make a firm decision on whether to use €140bn (£120bn) frozen Russian central bank assets to fund Ukraine’s defence, while the relationship between the Trump and Zelenskyy remains delicate.
Russia has, meanwhile, intensified its bombing of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Power and water were out in Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv this week, after targeted attacks aimed at breaking public resistance inside Ukraine.
Before the meeting, Starmer accused the Russian president of wanting to prolong a war in which Ukrainian civilians were coming under attack. “From the battlefield to the global markets, as Putin continues to commit atrocities in Ukraine, we must ratchet up the pressure on Russia,” he said.
Two children were among seven people killed this week when a nursery in Kharkiv was directly hit by Russian bombing. Footage from the scene showed firefighters rescuing young children from a site that had been full with several dozen youngsters only a few minutes earlier.
European leaders hope to capitalise on a slowly shifting mood at the White House. This week, Trump called off a planned summit with Putin in Budapest, and on Wednesday imposed sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s two largest oil companies.
The US president has also begun to call for a ceasefire along the existing frontlines, rejecting Russian demands for more territory in eastern Ukraine as a condition for ending the fighting. But he declined to agree to supply Tomahawk cruise missiles to Kyiv after a tense meeting with Zelenskyy in Washington a week ago.
Though Britain says it wants allies to step up the gifting of long-range munitions to ensure Ukraine can build on the chemical factory attack, it is unclear how far London would go to encourage Trump. With a range of over 1,000 miles, they could strike targets far beyond the Storm Shadow’s official range of 155 miles.
Britain placed Rosneft and Lukoil under sanctions in the middle of the month, but the EU has not done so largely because Lukoil supplies Hungary and Slovakia. Instead, the bloc’s leaders agreed a sanctions package, its 19th against Russia, that would gradually ban liquefied natural gas imports by the beginning of 2027.
Zelenskyy arrived in London after visiting Brussels. On Thursday, EU leaders sidestepped taking a decision on using Russia’s frozen assets to fund Ukraine’s defence, despite a plea from the Ukrainian president to take swift action to make Moscow pay for its war.
