Britain will continue to lead the charge as we shift gears towards a more secure and peaceful future
Sir Keir Starmer hosted the Coalition of the Willing meeting in London
Credit : Henry Nicholls /WPA Pools
Rachel Reeves Chancellor of the Exchequer
25 October 2025
Putin refuses peace. He ignored President Zelensky’s offers to meet. He rejected the ceasefire offered by the US and Ukraine. His war targets ordinary Ukrainians going about their lives. This week, his forces attacked a Ukrainian nursery school in Kharkiv, putting a 6-month-old baby in hospital.
We can all see that Putin continues to choose violence, brutality, and destruction. We will not stand for this. Which is why, yesterday, we continued our efforts to lead the charge in further piling pressure on Putin by hosting a Coalition of the Willing meeting in London.
But how do we get Putin to the table when he clearly doesn’t want to be there?
Two weeks ago, alongside the Foreign Secretary, I announced strong new sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil. This is the most impactful UK sanctions package on Russian energy revenues since the war began.
That means that no UK citizen or company can buy their oil and put money in Russia’s coffers, or help others to do so. This coincided with Putin kicking off his Russian Energy Week in Moscow, undermining his efforts to pitch his most valuable funding stream to those across the globe.
With these new measures, we are moving away from the incrementalism of past sanctions and taking decisive action and on Friday, the UK government hosted a Coalition of the Willing meeting to further pile pressure on Putin. Last week, I flew to the US to meet with global partners and rally them to the cause of cutting Russia off from its oil and gas revenues.
There, I met my US counterpart, Scott Bessent, to discuss how our new sanctions needed a united front, and this week they have joined our move to strip the funding from Putin’s war machine.
President Trump’s sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil on Thursday, alongside UK action, will make it significantly harder for Russia to find buyers for this oil and will substantially undermine their ability to finance their illegal war. Together, these oil companies export 3.1 million barrels a day of Russian oil. Russia is clearly hurting – Putin does not have the finances to keep this war going.
The EU this week also passed their 19th package of sanctions, taking important action to hit Russia’s gas sector for the first time. But we will not stop there. We must show Putin how determined we are and that we will not stand by while he refuses to engage with negotiations.
Britain’s national security – the foundation of our Plan for Change – depends on Ukraine’s security. That’s why we’re exploring every lever we can pull to turn up the pressure. That means depriving Putin of money to fund his war – while also providing Ukraine with the funding it so desperately needs to defend itself.
That is why we are working with our European allies to explore how we can make progress on utilising the value of immobilised Russian sovereign assets. Alongside the Foreign Office, my team is working tirelessly to mount even more pressure on Putin, but we cannot do this alone.
We need a united front from our global partners to continue to tighten the screws on Putin. Over the coming weeks, we will continue to lead the charge as we shift gears towards a more secure, more peaceful future.
Comment from :
Cor Kemp
May I desperately urge the divergent West, including extremely unreliable Trump, to make it clear to Putin that if his Ukraine invasion results in any Russian advantage, that all sanctions will be maintained. In other words, Putin will never be rewarded for any successful land-grab in the likely chaotic end of this horrible war.
Ozzy Pom
How about cutting the immigration and the welfare bill and spending it on defence – that’s one you don’t seem to have thought of.
Matt Forster
This is excellent. Russia’s revenues from oil and gas sales not only pay for the illegal war in Ukraine but also line the pockets of that country’s corrupt politicians, military and business leaders – and of course of Putin himself.
Russia’s economy is already on the ropes with sky-rocketing inflation and interest rates. There are signs that even immoral India and China are withdrawing their support.
Russia’s economy is its weak spot. Sanctions take time to work but are now causing the Kremlin real pain
Trevor Smallwood
Reply to Matt Forster
Yes. Any pain we can cause to the Russian thieving classes is time well spent. They regularly kill each other to gain control of a money stream. Now we want them to see Vlad as the single greatest impediment to their vicious business practises…..and embrace the obvious remedy.
Thomas Westin
Russia doesn’t want peace — it wants reflection.
It has never built a coherent identity of its own; instead, it survives by mirroring the West through a distorted prism.
Every cultural or technological advance it calls uniquely Russian is, at its core, a reaction — a copy reframed, a narrative inversion.
Moscow’s politics, its orthodoxy, even its imperial myths are borrowed architectures, reassembled to prove the West wrong.
Peace is impossible because peace demands self-definition — and Russia’s power depends on perpetual contrast.
That’s why it carries an almost pathological urge to annihilate others’ identities: to erase what it cannot create, and to claim as its own what it can only imitate.
Graham Boyd
The only thing the socialist party has got right is Ukraine.