Sending European peacekeeping troops to Ukraine would be “risky, complex and ineffective”, Giorgia Meloni has said in her sharpest criticism yet of Keir Starmer’s peace plan.

The Italian prime minister, a supporter of Kyiv, said she was not convinced by the British and French proposals who want a “coalition of willing” nations, backed by US security guarantees, to police an eventual peace in Ukraine.

Speaking in the Italian parliament while Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin held talks over a possible ceasefire, Ms Meloni said she supported the US president’s efforts.

But she warned it was a “banal fact of reality” that there could not be lasting security in Europe without the United States.

“Italy’s role is not to follow its European or American partners, but to signal its point of view and also its dissent: that is what we have done in the face of proposals that have been made, which do not convince us,” she told Italian MPs.

“The issue of troops in Ukraine has never been on the agenda, just as we believe that sending European soldiers, supported by France and Great Britain, is a risky, complex and ineffective proposal”.

Ms Meloni’s hard-Right government has until now strongly backed Kyiv in its war with Russia, despite her coalition partners’ history of warm ties with Moscow.