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”.
