LONDON — British lawmakers drew chilling historical parallels Thursday as U.S. President Donald Trump signaled that he’s ready to do a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine — while apparently sidelining Kyiv’s key demands.
The British government threw its weight behind Ukraine following Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. That consensus has held despite a change of government in London, and the current Labour administration has repeatedly argued since Trump took office that it wants to support Ukraine negotiating from a position of strength.
But the Trump team’s signal Wednesday that it will not countenance a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders or its entry to the NATO military alliance sparked uproar among some prominent British politicians — many of whom drew parallels with the infamous 1938 Munich Agreement between Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and allies including Britain.
That agreement was held up as securing “peace for our time” by then-Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain — only for Hitler’s invasion of Poland the following year to trigger World War II.
Conservative MP Julian Lewis, former chair of the Commons defense committee who has served in the Royal Naval Reserve, asked ministers in the house Thursday to “impress on President Trump at every possible opportunity that the reason why appeasement led to World War II was that it left a vacuum in Europe.”
“The reason why the occupation of Eastern Europe at the end of that war did not lead to World War III was that the United States filled any possible vacuum and contained further aggression,” he added.
“History has shown time and again that appeasement fails,” Conservative MP David Reed, who used to serve in the Royal Marines, told POLITICO in a statement.
“This war must end on Ukraine’s terms — anything less would be a betrayal of a brave ally who was invaded without provocation, and a direct threat to Europe’s security.”
Healey: No talks without Ukraine
The comments came as Britain’s Defense Secretary, John Healey, joined NATO colleagues to stress that Kyiv must be involved in any peace talks. The Labour government has sought to emphasize that it hears Trump’s call for higher defense spending in Europe, and has avoided publicly pre-judging how the talks may go or criticizing Trump’s strategy.
But Healey made clear as he arrived at a meeting of the alliance’s defense ministers in Brussels Thursday: “There can be no negotiation about Ukraine without Ukraine.”
That view was echoed across the political divide in London — albeit in less diplomatic terms.
“History has taught us that peace negotiations never succeed without the involvement of all the interested parties,” Tory MP Neil Shastri-Hurst, who previously served in the British Army, said in a statement. “The U.S. president would do well to start by getting Putin to agree to reparation payments for the damage inflicted on Ukraine’s infrastructure.”
“Trump’s call seems, before any negotiations, to have ceded key elements of the discussion before it begins,” former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith said in a message. “It’s a very poor start to a negotiation.”
Tory MP John Whittingdale, who serves on the Commons foreign affairs committee, pointed out that the U.K. signed the 1994 Budapest Memorandum promising to respect Ukraine’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity” — now undermined by Russia.
“It would be a betrayal if they would seek to impose a solution,” he told POLITICO of the U.S. and Russian talks, while warning that “Europe is going to have to step up” if the U.S. retreats from its longstanding role as guarantor of European security.
The centrist Lib Dems, who’ve repeatedly criticized Trump, also drew parallels with World War II Thursday. The party’s Europe spokesperson James MacCleary said the West now “might be facing the worst betrayal of a European ally since Poland in 1945.”
And its longest-serving MP Alistair Carmichael warned that a weak agreement would not deter Putin from further land-grabs. “Viewed from Washington, the idea of carving up the map in Europe might look like a pragmatic deal, even if history tells us that that always ends badly,” he said in the Commons. “Surely, in Europe, we understand that, no matter what we give Vladimir Putin, he’s always going to want more.”
Speaking in the House of Commons too, Labour MP Johanna Baxter said of Trump’s actions: “This is less the Art of a Deal and more a charter for appeasement.”