'Governing by strength'

Cooper has a lot to lose by speaking up on legality

- Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor

Anyone trying to understand why Yvette Cooper studiously avoided saying whether the UK viewed the kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro as a breach of international law needed to take notice of what was planned in Paris a day later.

After the foreign secretary’s 90-minute humiliation in the House of Commons on Monday night, a joint statement was expected in the French capital by the coalition of the willing - and a draft included the US promising binding security guarantees to protect Ukraine in the event of a further Russian attack.

From the Foreign Office’s perspective, there was no good reason to be critical of Donald Trump if it risked provoking him to withdraw the painstakingly negotiated and fragile US agreement to participate in the Ukraine security guarantees.

Those guarantees, the subject of military-level talks for months, required the US to sign up if they were to be seen as a credible, viable alternative to Ukraine’s Nato membership - an aspiration that Ukraine is being forced to abandon. The guarantees are also the precondition for a negotiated settlement between Russia and Ukraine that Europe and Kyiv can both swallow.

For British officials, the US agreement to be a guarantor, symbolised by the presence of Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff in Paris, was one of the great diplomatic rescue jobs, given Europe had been left flatfooted and horrified when Witkoff’s 28-point abandonment of Ukraine leaked back on 19 November.

The US administration official that probably did most to coax Trump back to offering future protection to Ukraine, and therefore Europe, was the US secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio.