Trump’s behaving like an agent of the KGB – it’s time Starmer stood up to him

As the US president brags about talks with Putin, Starmer must now decide whether he has what it takes to lead the country – or go down in history as an appeasement prime minister like Neville Chamberlain, warns world affairs editor Sam Kiley

Some leaders make history. Others have it thrust upon them when they fail to understand the moment.

Donald Trump’s announcement that he has opened bilateral negotiations with Vladimir Putin over the future of Ukraine, which Putin invaded and where his armies have been accused of committing war crimes, is one such “moment”.

Keir Starmer must now decide whether he has what it takes to lead the country – or go down in history as an appeasement prime minister like Neville Chamberlain.

In 1938, Chamberlain returned from meeting Adolf Hitler, waving a document and claiming it brought “peace for our time”. He’d met the Nazi leader in Munich.

Coincidentally, from Friday, world leaders, defence ministers, generals, spooks and others will be gathered in Munich for the annual security conference. Top on the list of discussions will be the future of Ukraine.

The parallels do not stop there. Chamberlain’s Munich Agreement traded a large chunk of Czechoslovakia for a commitment from Hitler that Germany’s imperial ambitions would end with the absorption of 3 million Czech citizens from the Sudetenland into the Reich.

In 1938, the British prime minister was hoodwinked into believing that was a solemn written commitment from the fuhrer.

But Trump hasn’t been suckered by Putin. Trump is an enthusiastic collaborator with the Kremlin. Moments before he announced, on social media, that he had opened talks with Putin over the future of Ukraine, he acceded to most of Putin’s much-telegraphed demands.

In Brussels, Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of defence, said that Ukraine should give up on ever getting all of its territory back. He said that the US would never send troops there – not even as part of a peacekeeping mission – and that Ukraine can forget about joining Nato.

It’s worth repeating: those are all Putin’s demands.

Ukraine will merely be kept informed, while Putin – the former head of the KGB – works out what to do with Ukraine in talks with a US president who is behaving as though he is an actual KGB agent.

After a Russian invasion of a European country, no KGB officer could have dreamt of sitting opposite a US president who had already threatened to colonise Nato-member Canada, or invade Greenland, which is part of Nato-member Denmark.

He surely could not have dared to imagine a US president who was openly contemptuous of Nato, the alliance at the heart of the West’s defence against Russia since WWII?

Could he ever have dreamt of a US president who agreed with him that Russia was provoked into invading Ukraine by its desire to join Nato and the European Union – another multilateral bloc that Trump believes is close to an enemy? That the US soft-power vehicle USAID would be shut down?

No master spy, surely, would have come up with the idea that the US should destroy its standing in the Middle East with a mind-boggling, loopy plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its people and dump them in neighbouring deserts? That would deliver the Kremlin undreamt-of opportunities as America’s plans were slapped away and Trump pulled Washington’s funding for its allies in Egypt and Jordan.

But that’s what has happened. The Oval Office is occupied by a man who, by accident or design, seems to be prioritising the interests of Russia over those of his own country – or its staunch allies.

The foreign ministers of the UK, the EU, Germany, Italy, France, Poland and Ukraine did rush out a statement after Trump’s announcement of talks with Putin.

“We are looking forward to discussing the way ahead together with our American allies. Our shared objectives should be to put Ukraine in a position of strength. Ukraine and Europe must be part of any negotiations,” they insisted.

They didn’t have the nerve to say, very simply, that Ukraine’s allies in the West reject any and every process that excludes Ukraine – or the tacit acceptance that it has lost its war before talks have even begun.

Starmer could take the lead on this and show that appeasement has to stop in London. He should remember that under Chamberlain’s Munich Agreement, when Hitler was given Czechoslovakia’s German-speaking province – just as Putin’s already been told he can keep the Donbas – Hitler invaded Poland.