The UK has warned that Vladimir Putin will break any ceasefire deal that is not backed up by hard security guarantees. David Lammy, the foreign secretary, has also said that Russia should not have any say over whether Western troops are deployed to Ukraine as peacekeepers.
Thursday 20 March 2025 22:37, UK
America’s global credibility is at stake over how its president deals with the war in Ukraine, Poland’s foreign minister has told Sky News.
In a wide-ranging interview with Mark Austin, Radoslaw Sikorski also said that Vladimir Putin wants “all of Ukraine” and warned Donald Trump is “capable of changing his policy rather rapidly”.
Poland has stood as one of Ukraine’s fiercest allies throughout the war with Russia,
Sikorski said that Trump cares only about having success, but that the “credibility of the United States is staked on the quality of the solution”.
Watch his full interview with Mark below…
French President Emmanuel Macron has confirmed he will host the next “collation of the willing meeting”, and it now appears that there will be a Ukrainian presence.
Diplomats have told the Reuters news agency that he’ll travel to France next Wednesday ready for talks with his hosts, as well British, Polish and German leaders on Thursday.
A third diplomat said Canada and Italy had been invited, although others were unable to confirm their presence.
Talks will centre on ongoing efforts to end the war, security assurances for Kyiv and how to boost aid for Ukraine, the sources said.
A bit more on that apparent Russian attack on Odesa now.
“The enemy massively attacked Odesa and the region with attack drones,” the local regional governor has said.
“There is damage to civilian infrastructure, including a residential high-rise, a shopping centre and shops,” Oleg Kiper said.
Three people were injured, including a young girl, he added.
“As a result of the Russian attack, powerful fires broke out in three locations.”
He also urged residents to stay indoors as it was not clear if the attack was over.
As we’ve been reporting, the prime minister today visited Britain’s next generation of nuclear submarine.
While being reminded about British nuclear strength, Russian President Vladimir Putin will also doubtless take note of a potential weakness, Sky security and defence editor Deborah Haynes explains in this video…
The Ukrainian city of Odesa is under attack from Russian drones, the head of the office of the president has said.
It’s not clear how many people are hurt at present.
Andriy Yermak said: “Odesa is on fire.
“Russian drones are hitting civilian targets in the city, there are casualties.”
Today, the UK is hosting military officials from at least 26 countries today as Sir Keir Starmer hopes to move his “coalition of the willing” into an “operational phase”.
Discussions will be focused on how nations involved could potentially form a peacekeeping force – what that may look like, what logistics would be required and so on.
We’ve not seen a definitive list of all the countries attending, but military patches bearing flags and other identifiers have been spotted.
Those include: France, Ukraine, Germany, Poland, Canada, Denmark, Australia, Czechia, Finland, Albania, Turkey, Sweden, Norway, New Zealand, Netherlands, Romania, Portugal, Luxembourg, Latvia, Lithuania, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Belgium, Spain, Italy and Estonia.
Donald Trump is speaking from the White House, unveiling another swathe of executive orders.
He first discusses a new order to increase US production of critical minerals and rare earths.
He instantly turns to Ukraine, and says: “One of the things we are doing is signing a deal, very shortly, with respect to rare earths with Ukraine which have tremendous value.”
Yesterday, the White House said it had “moved on” from the deal, although sources indicated later to our US correspondent Mark Stone that that wasn’t quite the case.
“And now we have moved beyond the economic minerals deal. We are at a place of peace. We’re at a partial ceasefire, and we’re moving towards a full ceasefire and a long-standing peace in this conflict.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt speaking yesterday
Trump also comments more broadly on the conflict.
“We’re doing very well with regard to Ukraine and Russia,” he says, referencing calls with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“We would love to see that [war] come to an end and I think we’re doing pretty well in that regard.”
He says he believes “we’ll get a deal done”.
A bit more on what the peace talks in Saudi Arabia will look like on Monday now…
A Ukrainian source has told Sky News how the Americans plan to handle talking to Russian and Ukrainian delegations separately.
“In general, the concept of the Americans is that they are talking with Russians and they are talking with Ukrainians simultaneously, in different rooms and would kind of walk between meetings/rooms,” the source said.
“But its still not clear which kind of format of talks will be in the end.
“It’s not planned that Ukrainians and Russians will have direct talks.”
Earlier today, our security and defence analyst Michael Clarke answered your questions on the war in Ukraine.
You can catch up with all his answers below…
By Serena Barker-Singh, political correspondent
Nestled through the Lake District in a port-town in Cumbria is the sprawling BAE Systems manufacturing site.
Inside their large metallic containers a new generation of nuclear-armed submarines are being carefully constructed to replace the old HMS Vanguard boats.
We were invited in to catch a rare glimpse of these subs and to see how they’re manufactured.
Any activity around a nuclear deterrent is so secretive that filming of the boats is tightly controlled and for some parts of the trip our phones were taken off us.
The decision to give access today was designed to signal to Moscow that the UK remains a nuclear-armed power.
Billions of pounds of British strength
The prime minister was here to lay the keel of these new Dreadnought submarines which will be ready in the early 2030s.
It’s part of a whole programme to renew the UK’s nuclear deterrent at a cost of more than £30bn, with an additional contingency of £10bn – it’s the UK’s most expensive and important procurement programme.
Dozens of workers in their hard hats lined the rafters above and dutifully applauded both the defence secretary and then the PM.
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