Sir Keir Starmer’s plans for a “coalition of the willing” to keep the peace in Ukraine have been dismissed as “political theatre”.

The Prime Minister proposed the peacekeeping initiative earlier this month, insisting several countries were prepared to enforce any peace deal.

But few concrete details of what troops and equipment would be sent have emerged.

On Sunday, senior military sources dismissed the plans, telling The Telegraph that Sir Keir had “got ahead of himself”.

Earlier this weekend, Donald Trump’s special envoy dismissed the plans as “a posture and a pose”. Steve Witkoff said the idea was based on a “simplistic” notion of the Prime Minister and other European leaders thinking “we have all got to be like Winston Churchill”.

It comes amid reports the White House has pledged to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine by April 20, when Easter Sunday falls in both Western and Orthodox churches.