Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are discussing sending British and French soldiers to Ukraine as a peacekeeping force after any potential deal to end the war, The Telegraph understands.

The French president is championing the idea and has already talked about it with Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, and Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister.

Press spokesmen for Downing Street and the Elysee Palace did not dispute that Sir Keir and Mr Macron discussed the possibility during their meeting at Chequers last week.

Details of the conversations are being kept under wraps by officials in London and Paris. However, multiple well-placed UK government sources have stressed Sir Keir is not yet fully signed up.

One Whitehall source told The Telegraph: “There are challenges over what we could support, what would we want to support, and the broader question about the threat that those troops may be under and whether that is escalatory.”

The proposal comes as European leaders scramble to work out how to continue supporting Ukraine’s sovereignty as president-elect Donald Trump pushes for Kyiv to strike a peace deal with Russia.

Mr Trump enters the White House on Monday. He has rowed back on his campaign promise to end the conflict on “day one” as US president but aims to do so in the first six months of his administration.