Even just a few weeks ago Starmer was promising to support Ukraine “for ever”. They even signed some kind of one hundred year pact. Now that the Trump administration seems to be genuinely keen to mend relations with Russia, Starmer and his Foreign Secretary Lammy are talking about the necessity of a deal. Starmer and Lammy are saying: “Now is the time”. The US has made it clear that the deal involves no NATO for Ukraine and a loss of territory. Saying “now is the time” for the deal which only a few weeks ago the UK signed a one hundred year pact against, makes them look more than a little ridiculous. Then Starmer and Macron made more “powerful” statements about “boots” on the ground in Ukraine. However; it now turns out that that is dependent on US Security guarantees. The US has said they will not give Ukraine any “security guarantees”. So that is, presumably, the end of boots on the ground to “enforce” a peace deal. (Perhaps this is why the language has now changed from “enforcing” to “monitoring” a ceasefire). At the same time Starmer has been issuing bold statements about the ceasefire. Putin must stop “playing games”. He is trying, desperately, to present the ceasefire (were it to happen) as some kind of victory for the Ukraine war party. (Even though it must surely be evident to the rest of the world that it is Zelensky trying to play games with the US and get as much “support” out of them as possible, even to bring European and US forces directly into Ukraine).
The issue facing Starmer and Marcon is how to manage the narrative around their defeat in Ukraine. The problem is to try to appear that it was them that faced down Putin. Some bright spark in No. 10 has even come up with these words to put into Starmer’s mouth: “My feeling is that sooner or later (Putin’s) going to have to come to the table and engage in serious discussion, but – and this is a big but for us this morning in our meeting – we can’t sit back and simply wait for that to happen.” [1] That is quite a good gambit; it is the one where your opponent has decided to stop fighting, for reasons of his own, and you declare that you defeated him. At any event it is clear that, as this site predicted some time ago, what we would see at this stage from European leaders and the UK is an exercise in narrative management. They need to extract themselves from this debacle while appearing to their publics (and perhaps most importantly, their self-images), as having forced Russia into a ceasefire or settlement. They are trying to establish themselves as the victors. They are trying to sneak something that looks like a victory for them into Trump’s genuine, but quite possibly insufficient, efforts to bring the war to a close. Unaware, perhaps, that were they to be taken seriously, they would be jeopardising the ceasefire which they need to “claim victory”.
The unavoidable collision between the reality of what Russia will accept and the plan to “strengthen Ukraine so they can defend themselves, and strengthening, obviously, in terms of military capability” has yet to come.
Update – “beyond delusional”!!
This in the Guardian:
Starmer is now answering questions from reporters after the press conference. In response to a journalist’s question, Starmer said that Putin’s response to a ceasefire is “not good enough”.
Oh my god. There are no words for it. This is Starmer telling Putin off like an inadequate junior employee. Here we see the problem; they treat Russia as a junior vassal state. The language they use is rude and disrespectful and conveys the sense that they think they can boss Russia about. This despite the reality that Russia is in the driving seat on the battlefield. Kiev’s Kursk operation has come unstuck, as any serious commentator predicted. Notice, how the media says nothing about this disaster. The leaders of the West, (except conceivably some in the current US administration, and a couple of European states), really do think they rule the world and no evidence will persuade them otherwise. Richard Sakwa cites a journalist citing an anonymous White House official after the 2003 Iraq war:
The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community’, which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality’. I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore’, he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do’. [2]
And this explains a great deal. The narratives these people produce don’t even vaguely line up with reality. They are just used to making up stories. After each bungled and murderous adventure, (Libya, Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan), they just move on. The media plays their part. For example; the media maintained and has maintained a more or less total silence on the disaster of the Libyan operation. Where can you find articles pointing to the migration crisis as being a result of this; yet Gaddafi specifically foretold this before he was tortured to death on the battlefield by UK proxy forces? You can find some articles discussing the corruption in the US occupation of Afghanistan, but not much, and nothing that goes too deep despite the reality of years of wasted lives and billions of dollars only to end up with the Taliban back in charge anyway. Why did the media or the politicians not call that out for the massive scandal it was? The media does just enough to maintain an illusion of democracy and no more. The MPs, in the UK, do nothing at all. These people keep telling the dream-sequences in which they are masters of the Universe because it seems to them they are, and no one questions them. When they bomb Afghanistan, Serbia, Libya and Iraq they probably feel they are masters of the Universe. Russia though presents a somewhat different problem. A solid obstacle to narratives of supremacy, which is why the narratives are looking even more obviously delusional than usual.
There is going to be no Euro-Ukraine army in Ukraine, at least not without war with Russia. But even this, the media will massage away for them; and already is, as “enforce” silently becomes “monitor” without anyone pointing out that they are already backtracking.
Notes
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/mar/15/russia-ukraine-war-peace-plan-ceasefire-keir-starmer-putin-zelenskyy-trump-latest-news-live?filterKeyEvents=false&page=with%3Ablock-67d553dc8f0881be55ef50d3#block-67d553dc8f0881be55ef50d3
- Sakwa, Richard. The Lost Peace: How the West Failed to Prevent a Second Cold War (p. 111). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.