UK and France suggest partial one-month truce between Russia and Ukraine

France and the UK are proposing a partial one-month truce between Russia and Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron and his foreign minister have said, as European efforts to bolster support for Kyiv accelerate in the face of uncertain US backing.

On Monday, a day after European leaders rallied around Ukraine at a summit in London, Jean-Noël Barrot said: “Such a truce – on air, sea and energy infrastructure – would allow us to determine whether Vladimir Putin is acting in good faith” and gauge his attitude to “real peace negotiations”.

The French foreign minister continued: “Never has the risk of a war in Europe, in the European Union been so high … The threat keeps getting closer to us, the frontline keeps getting closer to us.”

Barrot’s comments picked up on those of the French president, who suggested Paris and London had agreed on a plan for a short-term partial ceasefire that would not cover ground fighting, with troops to be deployed to Ukraine in a second phase.

Macron told Le Figaro newspaper on Sunday: “There will be no European troops on Ukrainian soil in the coming weeks. The question is how we use this time to try to obtain a truce, with negotiations that will take several weeks.”

But the UK armed forces minister, Luke Pollard, on Monday declined to confirm the idea, saying it was “not a plan we currently recognise”. Various options were on the table and it was “probably not right for me at the moment to comment”.

He said: “No agreement has been made on what a truce looks like. But we are working together with France and our European allies to look at what is the path to how … we create a lasting and durable peace in Ukraine.”

The remarks came after European leaders, the head of Nato, Mark Rutte, and Canadian officials met in London on Sunday after an acrimonious exchange between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump in Washington on Friday.

The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, who convened the London talks, said afterwards that the leaders had agreed to draw up a Ukraine peace plan that would be presented to the Trump administration, but no details have so far emerged.

The Kremlin, which has rejected the idea of any western troops in Ukraine, said on Monday the results of the summit would allow “the continuation of hostilities”, adding that Zelenskyy must be forced to change his stance and seek peace.

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, said Friday’s Oval Office clash showed how difficult it would be to reach a settlement on the conflict, and that Russia would continue to negotiate with the US on normalising the countries’ bilateral ties.

Peskov claimed Zelenskyy was responsible for the heated exchanges, describing them as “quite an unprecedented event”. He said the Ukrainian president had “demonstrated a complete lack of diplomatic abilities, to put it mildly”.

Zelenskyy said on Monday he would work with Europe on the terms for a possible peace deal to present to the US, amid growing fears that Trump intends to force Kyiv into a peace deal that gives Russia what it wants.

The Ukrainian president said on Telegram: “In the near future, all of us in Europe will shape our common positions – the lines we must achieve and the lines we cannot compromise on. These positions will be presented to our partners in the United States.”

In a video showing damage from Russian attacks on Ukraine, Zelenskyy said Kyiv “needs strong support from our partners”, with Moscow launching “more than 1,050 attack drones, nearly 1,300 aerial bombs, and more than 20 missiles” in the past week.

Starmer said after Sunday’s meeting that while the US was “not an unreliable ally”, it was clear that “Europe must do the heavy lifting”.

The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said the continent must urgently rearm to “prepare for the worst”. Trump dismissed European concerns, saying the US should worry less about Putin and more about domestic crime.

Amid calls from Macron for EU countries to raise defence budgets to 3%-3.5% of GDP, German coalition talks have raised the prospect of a huge boom in spending including special defence and infrastructure funds worth hundreds of billions of euros.

Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s Moscow-friendly prime minister, criticised the London summit, saying European leaders “decided … they want to go on with the war instead of opting for peace” and describing their approach as “bad, dangerous and mistaken”.

Orbán and Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, are likely to challenge and may veto the conclusions of an extraordinary EU summit on Thursday to discuss support for Ukraine, European security guarantees and how to pay for European defence needs.