Defence Secretary to meet Norwegian counterpart amid security turmoil in Europe

America and Russia have kicked off talks to broker a peace in Ukraine, led by US secretary of state Marco Rubio and Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.

Ukraine was not invited to the negotiations which took place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and concluded with ground rules set for further diplomacy.

European countries were also locked out of the gathering, and are facing calls from US President Donald Trump and his defence secretary Pete Hegseth to increase their defence spending and shoulder more of the financial burden of supporting Kyiv.

Overnight Mr Trump suggested that Ukraine’s leaders should never have allowed the war to begin and that they “could have made a deal”.

In a press conference from Florida, Mr Trump also addressed Kyiv’s objections to being excluded from the talks.

“Today I heard: ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you been there for three years. You should have ended it three years” ago, Mr Trump said.

“You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”

Following an emergency meeting of European leaders, Sir Keir Starmer urged Mr Trump to provide a security guarantee to any Ukraine peace settlement, insisting it is the only way to deter Russia from attacking the country again.

The Prime Minister said he is prepared to deploy British troops as part of a peacekeeping force.

But other countries at Monday’s gathering, including Germany, resisted calls for European forces to be deployed to monitor a ceasefire.

On Tuesday, Defence Secretary Mr Healey said details of a US security guarantee for Ukraine are “being developed” and decisions made in the next few weeks will define “the security of our world for a generation”.

He added: “We’re in a new era of threat, and that demands a new era for defence, and in the middle of everything else, last week, the new defence secretary, Pete Hegseth from the US and I, made time to discuss the aims we share on defence reform.”

The Defence Secretary further stated that European nations know they “need to step up” on spending and have been “doing just that”.

Economists at the Institute for Fiscal Studies have warned that increasing the UK’s defence spending while maintaining other public services is likely to require additional tax rises by the Government.

Ministers have repeatedly said they will wait until the conclusion of the strategic defence review before they outline how they will meet their commitment to raise defence spending to 2.5% of gross domestic product, a measure of national economic output.