Home Office says it will tighten rules to keep ‘Kremlin-linked elites’ out of UK as Starmer speaks at Ukraine war summit
Good morning. At least this week we’re not going to have to put up with all the usual guff about the “special relationship”. UK politics this week will be dominated by Keir Starmer’s meeting with Donald Trump in the White House on Thursday, which was described as “probably … one of the most consequential meetings of a British prime minister and president that we have had since the second world war” by Sir Peter Westmacott, a former British ambassador to Washington., on the Westminster Hour last night. For the last 30 years at least, whenever a PM has met a new US president for the first time, commentary has inevitably focused on what it said about the state of the “special relationship”. Despite making the British sound insecure and needy, as a media narrative it always worked because it was simple and appealed to patriotic notions of British exceptionalism.
But last week it became clear that the “special relationship” that seems to matter most to Trump is the one he has with Vladimir Putin. There will still be huge interest in the outcome of the Starmer/Trump meeting. But the parameters have now shifted, and No 10 will probably be happy with a relationship that is positive, functioning, and not entirely disastrous for Ukraine.
Today is the third anniversary of the Russian invasion and this morning Starmer is joining European leaders in a call hosted by the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss the war. The Home Office has marked the anniversary by announcing that it intends to tighten rules to stop “elites linked to the Russian state” coming to the UK.
In a news release the Home Office says:
Under the new measures, the government will expand the criteria for exclusion to cover Kremlin-linked elites. This will ensure that, while Russia remains an acute national security threat, elites linked to the Russian state can be prevented from entering the UK.
Those who could be barred from the UK include anyone who provides significant support to the Russian state and/or those who owe their significant status or wealth to the Russian state and/or those who enjoy access to the highest levels of the Russian state.
Kremlin-linked elites can pose a real and present danger to our way of life. They denounce our values in public while enjoying the benefits of the UK in private – benefits which they look to deprive Ukraine of through their support of Russia’s war. They can act as tools for the Russian state, enabling the continuation and expansion of Russia’s aggression.
In practice, it is not clear what impact, if any, this is likely to have. The government has already imposed numerous sanctions on people linked to the Kremlin over the past three years (more are expected later today) and the Russians who are prominent in British public life (like the ones who turn up at Tory fundraisers) claim they are not Putin supporters. But the government is trying to send out a message. And it wants to draw a contrast with what used to happen, as described in the intelligence and security committee’s report published in 2020. The ISC said:
Successive governments have welcomed the oligarchs and their money with open arms, providing them with a means of recycling illicit finance through the London ‘laundromat’, and connections at the highest levels with access to UK companies and political figures.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9am: Keir Starmer is joining remotely a meeting of Eurpoean leaders hosted by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukraininan president, to mark the third anniversary of the Russian invasion. Starmer is due to give a speech at about 10.45am. Martin Belam is covering the meeting on our Ukraine live blog.
10am: Mike Amesbury, the MP for Runcorn and Helsy, will be sentenced after pleading guilty to assault last month.
10.30am: John Swinney, the Scottish first minister, attends an event in Edinburgh to mark the anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
Lunchtime: Starmer attends a virtual meeting of G7 leaders to discuss Ukraine.
2.30pm: Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
After 3.30pm: David Lammy, the foreign secretary, is due to make a statement to MPs on Ukraine.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
Key events
Keir Starmer is due to address the Ukraine conference shortly. There is a live feed here.
Keir Starmer posted this on social media this morning about the third anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine.
Three years on from Putin’s barbaric full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we face a once in a generation moment for our collective security and values.
We continue to stand with Ukraine for a just and lasting peace.
Slava Ukraini.
Boris Johnson claims Trump’s proposed $500bn mineral resources takeover ‘very promising’ deal for Ukraine
Donald Trump has been strongly criticised over the reported terms of a proposed deal what would see Ukraine handing over minerals and other natural resources worth $500bn to the US as part of a peace settlement, and in compensation for the military aid (worth far less) it has already received from Washington. This has been described as extortion.
But Boris Johnson, the former Tory PM, claims this is a “very promising” deal for Ukraine. Speaking to the BBC from Kyiv, he said:
All the language that we’re hearing about Ukraine being responsible for the war – you might as well say that the swimmers were responsible for attacking the shark in in Jaws, or the United States were responsible for attacking Japan at Pearl Harbor. It is complete inversion of the truth. It’s Orwellian.
However, we have to focus on what is actually happening here in in Kyiv, and what is really going on in the negotiations.
And today, if you look at the text on the table with the minerals deals, it contains in it, I think, things that are very promising for Ukraine.
It commits the United States to a free, sovereign and secure Ukraine, and it commits the United States to future financing of Ukraine.
Now that is very, very important because you can’t have a sovereign country that can’t decide its own future, can’t decide which clubs it wants to belong to, and you can’t have a sovereign country that can’t decide as part of the future of Ukraine what troops it wants to help protect its security.
‘All the language that we are hearing about Ukraine being responsible for the war, you might as well say the swimmers are responsible for attacking the shark in Jaws’
On #BBCBreakfast former Prime Minister Boris Johnson was in Kyiv, three years after the Russian launched a… pic.twitter.com/wDSp45ufBR
— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) February 24, 2025
Johnson has been a strong supporter of Ukraine since the invasion, and also a strong supporter of Donald Trump, and over this last week, as Trump has said false and critical thinks about Volodymyr Zelenskyy, implying Trump is now siding with Moscow against Ukraine and the west, Johnson has been coming up with increasingly elborate arguments trying to show that his two loyalties aren’t in conflict.
Last week he claimed, in effect, that although Trump was talking complete nonsense about Zelenskyy, it did not meant that he was pro-Putin, just that he was trying “to shock Europeans into action”.
In an interview on Times Radio this morning Dan Jarvis, the security minister, claimed that tightening the rules to exclude “Kremlin-linked elites” from the UK (see 9.29am) could affect “potentially quite a significantly large cohort” of Russians. He said:
The Foreign Office to date have sanctioned 1,700 individuals …This is an additional power. So this isn’t just about providing that measure which will add value in terms of the work that the sanctions regime is also doing. It’s also about protecting our own national security.
Downing Street has not released advance extracts from the speech Keir Starmer will give this morning at the Ukraine conference, but yesterday he spoke on the phone to the French president Emmanuel Macron, the Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and the Nato general secretary Mark Rutte, and it issued readouts of all three conversations.
In the calls Starmer restated his call for allies to work together “to put Ukraine in the strongest possible position at this crucial moment for global security” and stressed “the importance of Ukraine being at the centre of any negotiations to end the conflict”.
He also said it was “important for Europe to step up in order to ensure European security”.
This morning Kemi Badenoch has put her own statement about Ukraine on social media. She says:
On the third anniversary of the start of Russia’s illegal invasion, we all need to remember how this war started, and restate our shared values and why we collectively back Ukraine.
The Conservatives are proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine. They have been battling the most flagrant breach of territorial integrity and sovereignty in Europe in recent times. They are on the frontline, protecting the principles that underpin our whole way of life – democracy, liberty and the rule of law.
I’m proud that Britain has stood with the heroes of Ukraine as they defend their country, and that the UK Parliament has been united in our resolve to do all we can to back them.
Home Office says it will tighten rules to keep ‘Kremlin-linked elites’ out of UK as Starmer speaks at Ukraine war summit
Good morning. At least this week we’re not going to have to put up with all the usual guff about the “special relationship”. UK politics this week will be dominated by Keir Starmer’s meeting with Donald Trump in the White House on Thursday, which was described as “probably … one of the most consequential meetings of a British prime minister and president that we have had since the second world war” by Sir Peter Westmacott, a former British ambassador to Washington., on the Westminster Hour last night. For the last 30 years at least, whenever a PM has met a new US president for the first time, commentary has inevitably focused on what it said about the state of the “special relationship”. Despite making the British sound insecure and needy, as a media narrative it always worked because it was simple and appealed to patriotic notions of British exceptionalism.
But last week it became clear that the “special relationship” that seems to matter most to Trump is the one he has with Vladimir Putin. There will still be huge interest in the outcome of the Starmer/Trump meeting. But the parameters have now shifted, and No 10 will probably be happy with a relationship that is positive, functioning, and not entirely disastrous for Ukraine.
Today is the third anniversary of the Russian invasion and this morning Starmer is joining European leaders in a call hosted by the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss the war. The Home Office has marked the anniversary by announcing that it intends to tighten rules to stop “elites linked to the Russian state” coming to the UK.
In a news release the Home Office says:
Under the new measures, the government will expand the criteria for exclusion to cover Kremlin-linked elites. This will ensure that, while Russia remains an acute national security threat, elites linked to the Russian state can be prevented from entering the UK.
Those who could be barred from the UK include anyone who provides significant support to the Russian state and/or those who owe their significant status or wealth to the Russian state and/or those who enjoy access to the highest levels of the Russian state.
Kremlin-linked elites can pose a real and present danger to our way of life. They denounce our values in public while enjoying the benefits of the UK in private – benefits which they look to deprive Ukraine of through their support of Russia’s war. They can act as tools for the Russian state, enabling the continuation and expansion of Russia’s aggression.
In practice, it is not clear what impact, if any, this is likely to have. The government has already imposed numerous sanctions on people linked to the Kremlin over the past three years (more are expected later today) and the Russians who are prominent in British public life (like the ones who turn up at Tory fundraisers) claim they are not Putin supporters. But the government is trying to send out a message. And it wants to draw a contrast with what used to happen, as described in the intelligence and security committee’s report published in 2020. The ISC said:
Successive governments have welcomed the oligarchs and their money with open arms, providing them with a means of recycling illicit finance through the London ‘laundromat’, and connections at the highest levels with access to UK companies and political figures.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9am: Keir Starmer is joining remotely a meeting of Eurpoean leaders hosted by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukraininan president, to mark the third anniversary of the Russian invasion. Starmer is due to give a speech at about 10.45am. Martin Belam is covering the meeting on our Ukraine live blog.
10am: Mike Amesbury, the MP for Runcorn and Helsy, will be sentenced after pleading guilty to assault last month.
10.30am: John Swinney, the Scottish first minister, attends an event in Edinburgh to mark the anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
Lunchtime: Starmer attends a virtual meeting of G7 leaders to discuss Ukraine.
2.30pm: Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
After 3.30pm: David Lammy, the foreign secretary, is due to make a statement to MPs on Ukraine.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
