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Sir Keir Starmer has backed Volodymyr Zelensky as “Ukraine’s democratically elected leader” after Donald Trump claimed he was a dictator and called for Ukraine to hold elections.
A Downing Street spokesperson said the prime minister had called Mr Zelensky on Wednesday evening and said it was “perfectly reasonable to suspend elections during wartime as the UK did during World War Two”.
Sir Keir was under growing pressure to speak up in support of Ukraine after Mr Trump posted a diatribe on his social media site, TruthSocial, claiming his Ukrainian counterpart was “a dictator without elections”.
Earlier, the US president had wrongly suggested that Ukraine started the current conflict in Russia, as well as falsely claiming Mr Zelenskyy had an approval rating of 4 per cent.
In response, the Ukrainian leader said Mr Trump was living in a “disinformation space”.
Mr Zelensky was elected as president of Ukraine in May 2019. While elections were previously scheduled to go ahead in 2024, they were not held as a result of martial law being in place.
The UK held no general election between 1935 and 1945, with the outbreak of war in 1939 causing the election due by the following year to be postponed.
A Downing Street spokesperson said: “The prime minister spoke to President Zelensky this evening and stressed the need for everyone to work together.
“The prime minister expressed his support for President Zelensky as Ukraine’s democratically elected leader and said that it was perfectly reasonable to suspend elections during wartime as the UK did during World War Two.”
The call between the two European leaders comes as the prime minister prepares to head to Washington next week for his first meeting with Mr Trump since his inauguration in January.
That meeting will see Britain attempt to balance support for Ukraine with the need to keep the White House onside.
While Downing Street said Sir Keir had “reiterated his support for the US-led efforts to get a lasting peace in Ukraine” during Wednesday evening’s phone call, Mr Trump’s recent remarks – alongside plans to impose tariffs on UK exports – have put the UK on a collision course with the new US administration.
Other UK figures have also hit out at Mr Trump’s comments, with Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch saying Mr Zelensky was “the democratically elected leader of Ukraine who bravely stood up to Putin’s illegal invasion”.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said Mr Trump’s comments “must be where the line is drawn” and hoped “the whole political spectrum” in the UK would “speak with one voice in opposition to Trump’s lies”.
Meanwhile, former prime minister Boris Johnson said the comments “are not intended to be historically accurate, but to shock Europeans into action”.
Following Wednesday’s phone call, Mr Zelensky said his country would “never forget the respect the British people have shown for Ukraine and our citizens”.
The Ukrainian president said: “I spoke with UK prime minister Keir Starmer. The United Kingdom’s role in fortifying Europe’s defence and security is important for us.
“We discussed upcoming plans and opportunities. UK’s support matters indeed, and we will never forget the respect the British people have shown for Ukraine and our citizens. Thank you for your support.”
Speaking on Thursday morning, culture secretary Lisa Nandy said UK ministers “don’t agree with [Mr Trump]”, when asked whether she thinks the US president was wrong to call Mr Zelensky a dictator.
She had earlier said: “What we’ve seen from the Trump administration over recent weeks is a series of interventions, one of which has been to bring Vladimir Putin to the table. There is no solution to what is happening in Ukraine without a diplomatic solution.”
Ms Nandy said the government is “optimistic that despite all of the heat and raised temperatures” of the last few days, “the prime minister will be able to take the heat down, bring parties around the table and ensure we get the solution that we need to defend Ukraine.”
Earlier this week, Washington and Moscow began talks to broker peace in Ukraine, led by US secretary of state Marco Rubio and Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.
Kyiv was not invited to the talks, which took place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Mr Zelensky has warned Ukraine will not accept a deal concluded in its absence.
Sir Keir – who attended a meeting of European leaders in Paris on Monday to thrash out their response to the Trump administration’s rapidly evolving stance on the conflict – has repeatedly stressed that there can be “no decisions about Ukraine without Ukraine”.
He has called for the US to provide a security “backstop” to any peace agreement, as well as proposing sending peacekeeping troops to Ukraine as part of a deal. However, other European nations have resisted discussing the possibility.
While Mr Trump said he is “all for” the promise to put British troops in Ukraine, he said the US does not need to deploy peacekeeping troops as “we’re very far away”.
